Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

Among the subjects that your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, discusses with Kevin are:   What does LegalSifter do and how does it do it? The hype cycle of AI.      The growth of the company?  Finding the right investor for a legal tech startup.  Partnering with other companies.  Regulatory reform in Arizona.

At the outset of the podcast, Andy shares his professional background, which spans over 20 years in the technology industry, building software solutions for various industries. He also talks about his transition to legal tech and his excitement about the future of innovation in the industry. Charlie and Andy discuss Aderant's broad functionalities, including practice management, litigation management, billing, recruiting, and knowledge management. Andy turns next to his current focus on innovation and disruption in the legal industry through data analytics and AI. Andy mentions Aderant's upcoming Momentum conference (May 2023), where it plans to unveil new technology for the legal tech space. Andy and Charlie close the podcast by covering futuristic legal tech trends (including blockchain (not "crypto") and the metaverse), Aderant's plans for staying ahead of the technology curve, and the pride that Aderant takes in its ability to evolve with the changing needs of clients and its continuing to be a leader in the market.

Our guests today are Mike Zourhi, the co-founder and CEO of Painworth, and Bryan Saunders, Painworth's Director of Growth, Marketing, & UX/UI. Mike kicks off the podcast by telling us his story where, as the victim of a hit-and-run by a drunk driver, Mike was inspired to create Painworth. Mike and Bryan describe Painworth's aim: to be the "voice" of the personal injury victim in settlement discussions of the victim's claims.  Painworth does this by educating the victim with award estimates for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages that will carry weight with lawyers and insurance adjusters because they are based on Painworth's machine learning-driven reviews of relevant court-based and other documentation relevant to award calculation.  Painworth's secret sauce is that it was built for use by personal injury victims (i.e., "regular people") themselves. Mike, Bryan, and Charlie discuss: - How Painworth simplifies processes for its users without sacrificing its use of a sophisticated approach at the back-end for award estimation, - Painworth's process for educating its "regular-people" customers in its web app's use and its processes for iterating on UI/UX improvements. - Painworth's roll-out plans for a US-based web app, - How Painworth has succeeded in gaining acceptance by both lawyers and insurance adjusters for Painworth’s use by personal injury victims, and - Business events that Mike and Bryan are most proud of to date.

Podcast host, Charlie Uniman, sits down (virtually) with Jerry Ting of Evisort to talk about: (i) How Jerry planted the seed for founding Evisort while still a student at Harvard Law School (and the role that serendipity played in Jerry's finding his co-founder), (ii) what law schools can (should?) do when it comes to training lawyers-to-be in the art of legal innovation and what perspective law students can bring to innovation in legal, (iii) just what it is that Evisort does in the contract lifecycle management space (with the discussion focusing on, among other things, Evisort's out-of-the-box usability and how Evisort really does help take the grunt work out of contract review), (iv) Evisort's success in marketing to in-house legal departments and other business enterprise personnel involved with contracts (here Jerry covers how Evisort has achieved success by helping those departments transform from being a "brake" on enterprise success to becoming a "gas pedal" that accelerates business success), and (v) the very personally gratifying story behind one of the business successes that Jerry and his team are most proud of to date.

Episode 46 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) - An Interview with Zach Posner, co-founder and Managing of The Legal Tech Fund (www.legaltech.com) Interested in the subject of how legal tech startups can get funded? Thought so - that's why this is a "must listen" episode. Here Zach Posner of The Legal Tech Fund (TLTF) (i) talks about fund-pitching strategies, (ii) offers advice for legal tech startups when facing the headwinds in today's economy and (iii) discusses TLTF's forthcoming Summit conference (December 7 - 9, 2022 in Miami; register here by the November 23, 2022 deadline: https://www.tltfsummit.com) and the Summit's StartUp Challenge (apply here by the August 31, 2022 deadline:(https://www.tltfsummit.com/apply-now) ).

Luke Yingling founded his legal tech startup, Analytica Legalis, about a year ago during his second year in law school. As you'll hear from Luke, his company has already raised its pre-revenue seed-stage financing and is looking forward to launching its beta version (with law firm beta testers already lined up and eager to go) this coming August. Hear Luke (a) chart his path from law student to legal tech startup founder, (b) relate how, as a student entrepreneur, he was able to take advantage of programs at his law school and elsewhere aimed at assisting very early-stage student-founded startups, (c) describe what Analytica Legalis does and how it distinguishes itself from other tools for litigators that analyze judges' opinions, (d) explain the preparations his company undertook to ready itself for its beta testing program, (d) also explain how he attracted investors that were interested in funding a pre-revenue legal tech startup, (e) discuss the importance of data visualization techniques for making his company's UI intuitive and easy-to-use and (f) tell listeners of the pride he and his team have taken in generating both commercial and academic excitement for the results available from the built "from-the-ground-up" version of Analytica Legalis' machine learning software and in innovating in the judge analytics space.

Episode 44 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), an interview with Susann Funke, co-founder and CEO of LEX AI (www.lexai.co). As Susann tells us,  LEX AI has built proprietary natural language processing tools that automate the preparation of accurate and readable summaries of often voluminous regulations for use by lawyers and business people alike.  From there, Susann charts her path from practicing law to co-founding LEX AI . In doing so,  Susann describes how a massive client project - with a very tight deadline - motivated her to find a way to automate the immense amount of manual effort that the project required.  Susann also explains how LEX AI: - has developed key metrics that show how its tools free timekeepers from low value work that clients won't pay for - gathers valuable feedback from its top-of -funnel sales efforts - has benefitted from building a diversified team, particularly when it comes to its solution building and cross-border marketing efforts - uses social media (including Instagram and soon TikTok) to bolster its marketing efforts (particularly among younger lawyers and younger business people) - finds a welcoming user base inside law school and university classrooms

Episode 43 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) -- An interview with Jace Lynch, COO of HyperDraft (www.hyperdraft.ai), and Sean Greaney, HyperDraft's General Counsel. HyperDraft is an AI-driven full service document generation, editing and closing platform for lawyers and other legal professionals.   Listen to Jace and Sean describe: (1) HyperDraft's origin story, (2) their company's commitment to designed-in simplicity and ease of use, (3) HyperDraft's own brand of customer on-boarding (ranging from an intuitive UI, helpful app tools tips, written materials and video explainers), (4) their aim to expand from currently targeting North American customers to targeting the European legal tech market next, (5) their successin selling HyperDraft to boutique and other SMB law firms, as well as to solo practitioners and (6) how and why they are most proud of HyperDraft's team, product value, software development responsiveness and short time-to-value for HyperDraft's customers.

Episode 42 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) -- An Interview with Raman Malik, founder and CEO of Rhetoric (www.rhetoric.app) Most leaders at legal tech startups present at one time or another to existing and prospective stakeholders (most importantly, to customer and investor prospects). So, it stands to reason that those leaders could use an app that makes getting presentation feedback as easy as clicking a button. Raman and his team have designed Rhetoric to be just that app; a "Grammarly for presentations," if you will (as Rhetoric itself puts it on its website) . Raman discusses (1) how Rhetoric works, (2) the growing importance of asynchronous presentation-giving, (3) several of Rhetoric's chief use cases and (4) Rhetoric's success in closing a seed round. Raman also gives some presentation-making pointers of his own (including his noting of two common presentation mistakes; namely, not soliciting enough feedback and ignoring the importance of tailoring the sequencing of a presentation’s topics for each different audience group). Finally, Raman explains how he and his team pride themselves on how carefully they define their goals, while at the same time being open to goal-revision as the Rhetoric team strives to learn, iterate and improve quickly.

In this 41st episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), we lear that guest Scott Leigh's company, AltFee (www.alterfeeco.com)  is on a mission. And that mission is to help lawyers (whether practicing solo, at small or medium-sized firms or at Big Law law firms) gain the freedom to implement alternative fee arrangements and break out of the billable hour model. We'll hear Scott talk about how he and his team have created an app that brings repeatable methods to lawyer/client alternative fee discussions - an app that, among other things: (1) encourages healthy and disciplined upfront conversations about matter scoping and (2) brings greater transparency to alternative fee setting. Moreover, Scott describes how AltFee's app helps lawyers build a repository of alternative fee setting best practices where lawyers (senior and junior) can go for guidance as new matters arise. Scott also talks about his company's "land and expand" strategy when selling into law firms and about the pride that he and his colleagues take in AltFee's thought leadership efforts to educate lawyers about alternative fee arrangement management. In addition, Scott provides insight into AltFee's app design and post-sale customer success efforts.