Pioneers and Pathfinders

Our guest today is Joe Borstein. Joe has been on the leading edge of change in the industry for many years, and today, he is the founder of LexFusion, a new collaborative venture among some of the biggest names in legal tech and outsourcing. LexFusion is born of Joe’s experience as both a lawyer and entrepreneur, with a goal of accelerating the adoption of technology within corporate legal departments and law firms. They will accomplish this by transforming a lengthy—and sometimes brutal—sales cycle into one that's simpler and easier. Joe calls it “a one-stop shop for high-end legal innovation.” He’s had a fascinating career path. The son of lawyers, Joe never doubted that he would follow the same path of his parents. He practiced law for six years before making the leap to Pangea3, a model for legal service delivery that was, at the time, extremely outside the norm for law firms. From the beginning, Joe posited that the growth of LPOs and ALSPs would not shrink the legal market, but grow it. Ten years later, we can't say he's wrong. In today's conversation, we talk about what it was like to put together and launch a business during the pandemic, building trust in a virtual environment, the changing mindset of the purchases of legal services, and how LexFusion chooses its member companies.

Today's guest followed her passion for persuasive writing from the courtroom to legal technology. Jackie Schafer is a former Paul Weiss litigator, in-house counsel, assistant attorney general, and serial entrepreneur. Today, she is the founder of Clearbrief, an AI-powered legal writing tool, which recently received $1.2 million in outside funding from big venture capital names Sequoia Capital and Madrona Venture Group. Her company has also received backing from Avvo founder Mark Britton and a number of other investors associated with companies as diverse as Grubhub, Workday, and Tableau. Listen in to today's conversation to learn more about Jackie's path, how her work on an immigration asylum case led to her passion for evidence-based storytelling, and her vision for how Clearbrief can transform the legal writing process and the justice system.

Long before unicorns were trending in popular culture, Lucy Bassli was thinking about “unicorn lawyers.” In her role as assistant general counsel at Microsoft overseeing contract management systems and procurement, she had a unique view into how process and technology can improve service delivery. Today, she has spun these unicorn lawyer traits into a trailblazing career as founder, advisor, speaker, and author. Lucy is the founder of InnoLaw Group, a legal service provider and consultant to law firms and in-house legal teams on a variety of innovation initiatives. She is also the chief legal strategist at LawGeex, a legal startup that automates contract review services with artificial intelligence. Listen in to today's conversation to learn more about how Microsoft's culture of empowerment and trust influenced Lucy's growth, how in-house work allows unicorn lawyers to flourish, and the massive impact of last year on legal innovation.

FisherBroyles is an overnight success that’s been 20 years in the making. Founders and managing partners James Fisher and Kevin Broyles have a lot to celebrate: the firm just entered the Am Law 200 with a 14% increase in revenue over 2019, and the addition of 51 partners in 2020. This is notable because FisherBroyles has no offices, no associates, and no secretaries—what James calls, “the headwinds of profitability.” As such, it's the first distributed firm to crack big law ranks, and a truly transformative take on the business of law. At a time when firms are deciding what their new normal looks like, James and Kevin are sticking with the status quo they established when they founded their firm in 2002, and they have aggressive plans for growth. Founded during the tech bubble implosion of the early aughts, FisherBroyles has survived and thrived through two eras of mass disruption for law firms: the recession in 2008-09, and now the pandemic. In today's conversation, learn how James and Kevin met and spent their days during the tech bubble implosion, why they don't consider FisherBroyles a “virtual” firm, and how the “perfect storm” of COVID-19 and their entry into Am Law 200 is setting the stage for their plans for future growth.

Today’s guests are Bryan Parker and Jonathan Greenblatt, founders of Legal Innovators, an alternative legal service provider designed to solve two of the toughest problems facing the profession: the training of junior legal talent, and diversity and inclusion. Their goal is to change the value proposition of junior legal talent for law firms and in-house teams, without sacrificing quality. They do this through a combination of training, mentoring, pricing, and flexible placements. Bryan and Jonathan have a friendship of more than 25 years, which began when they were both working at Shearman and Sterling. In today’s interview, we learn how that experience shaped their business model, how mentoring benefits all parties involved, and why diversity matters more now than ever.

Today’s guest is Lucy Ricca, Fellow at the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession and the Executive Director of the Utah Office of Legal Services Innovation. In that role, she has helped Utah’s Supreme Court build its legal regulatory sandbox, through which entities may use new models for legal businesses and offer new kinds of legal services to Utah’s public. It’s a fascinating model where economic regulations governing lawyers can be relaxed, data gathered, and policy improved. Listen in to today’s interview to hear all about the origin of the Utah regulatory sandbox, how Lucy got involved, and to learn more about the types of entities that have been approved to operate there.

Dan Rodriguez is the Harold Washington Professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, having previously served as dean January 2012 through August 2018. In that role, he was instrumental in bringing an interdisciplinary focus to the law school curriculum. Dan has also advocated for the law-business-technology interface as chair of the ABA Center for Innovation. In today’s episode, learn how Dan appeals to lawyers’ self-interest and selflessness to break down barriers, and how science and medicine can provide a model for the future of the profession.

Bruce MacEwen and Janet Stanton are president and partner, respectively, of Adam Smith, Esq., a consultancy serving law firms and a long-running blog on the economics of law firms. They combine their wealth of experience in economics, business, and law to help firms better prepare for tomorrow. After not knowing what to expect going into the pandemic, Bruce and Janet have found their business booming over the last year, as firms grappled with the fallout and people adapted to a new way of working. Join us for a discussion about how 2020 differs from the economic consequences of the 2008 recession, the potential impact from the “Cambrian explosion” of the pandemic, and what big firms offer that clients are willing to pay top dollar for.

Today, our guest is Michele DeStefano, a professor; author; speaker; and independent consultant on innovation, technology, culture, and cross-practice, cross-border initiatives. Before entering the legal ecosphere, she had a career in advertising and marketing for some ubiquitous brand names. Michele brings that experience to her work with lawyers and legal teams, helping them to identify problems, design solutions, and use storytelling for buy-in and adoption. Listen in to our conversation to learn why Michele thinks lawyers should go to marketing school, why getting everyone on the same problem plane is so critical to innovation efforts, and to hear about the unique work she is doing with Law Without Walls and the Digital Legal Exchange.

Today’s guest is Mark Cohen, a pioneer in every sense of the word. He is the CEO of Legal Mosaic, a legal business consultancy that provides strategic advice to corporate legal departments, law firms, legal service providers, legal networks, entrepreneurs, and law schools. He is a co-Founder and Executive Chairman of The Digital Legal Exchange, a unique, global, not-for-profit organization created to teach, apply, and scale digital principles to the legal function. Mark is passionate about modernizing legal education/training and bridging the gap between the Academy and the marketplace. He has been a regular contributor to Forbes, writing on the global legal marketplace. Mark was also a founder of Clearspire, one of the first virtual law firms. Join Steve and Mark for a fascinating conversation about how the digital legal transformation is upon the profession and how we can teach business concepts to a new generation of lawyers.