Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

Episode 40 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- An Interview with Christy Burke, Founder of Burke & Company In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Christy Burke, founder of Burke & Company (www.burke-company.com). As Burke & Company says on its website, "Legal technology providers need strong, creative PR representation to market successfully. Since 2004, Burke & Company has provided the highest standard in PR and marketing for legal tech." In addition to discussing how Christy came to found her company and what kinds of communications-related services her company provides firms and companies in legal and legal tech, Christy offers listeners a "masterclass" on legal tech sales-related communications by providing some answers to the following questions: (i) What are the most significant steps that legal tech startup leaders can take to “up their game” when it comes to communicating their company’s value proposition to law firms and in-house legal departments? (ii) What are some of the chief “unforced errors” that you’ve seen legal tech startup leaders commit in dealing with the press and in undertaking social media campaigns? (iii) Because legal tech startup founders often ask for tips on establishing their thought leadership bona fides, are there any pointers that you can offer to assist them in using their already existing subject-matter expertise to enhance their credibility as thought leaders?

In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), podcast host Charlie Uniman interviews Stephen Dowling, founder and CEO of Dublin, Ireland-based Trialview.  As TrialView puts it on its website (www.trialview.com}: "Quickly and easily digitise the trial process and save time, effort and money.  . . .  [Moreover,] TrialView’s unique synchronising technology enables document led hearings to be conducted remotely." We learn from Stephen how his founding of TrialView began, as is the case with many other legal tech startup founders, with frustrations he faced while practicing law.  Stephen explains that, as a junior trial lawyer working on long-running litigations, he wondered why his and his colleagues' wrangling with many thousands of documents couldn't be handled better with the introduction of digital technologies. As Stephen's developed his thinking  about the "digitization of trial work," he came to realize that it it went beyond just the digitizing document review (a step that was already being addressed by e-discovery companies). As Stephen came to see it, digitization tools could also be applied to the task of coordinating, in real time at trial: (i) the presentation of trial documents and (ii) the collaboration among the parties to the litigation in dealing with those documents and their presentation in court. Stephen goes on to discuss, among other topics: (A)  How TrialView went from its first, very minimum viable, product to the initial funding round for the company and the company's development of a fully-featured trial management tool. (B)  The way in which the COVID pandemic accelerated TrialView's development of video features in support of trials and other dispute resolution mechanisms that were required to be conducted on a fully-remote basis. (C) Stephen's belief that, even post-pandemic, we will witness a hybrid approach to conducting trials, mediations and arbitrations (where much of what was formerly done in-person will be carried out remotely, but with a core set of dispute elements more frequently than not being handled in-person). (D) What marketing approaches TrialView has taken successfully, especially in the face of getting both judges and frequently litigating parties (such as insurance companies) "on board" with TrialView's use (with Stephen also pointing out here how TrialView has partnered with companies that handle trial-related tasks outside of TrialView's purview to call attention to TrialView's offering) . (E) TrialView's penetration of markets outside Ireland and the UK, including especially its targeting of the deposition-taking market in the US (F) How Stephen and his TrialView colleagues are most proud of the role TrialView played in keeping Irish courts functioning at the outset of the COVID pandemic.

Episode 38 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast — Interview with Zeb Anderson, co-founder and CEO of LegalQ In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Zeb Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Legal Q (www.legalq.io). As LegalQ describes its offering on its website, “Searching [for an attorney] online feels overwhelming. Referrals from friends and family leading to dead ends. Often the only way to get legal help is by talking to an attorney. Use the LegalQ app to get help today [and] a licensed attorney will help you [to]: Know your options and legal rights, Avoid common legal pitfalls and mistakes, [and] Get personalized guidance for unique legal issues.” After talking about Zeb’s professional background and LegalQ’s product, Charlie’s discussion with Zeb digs deeply into: Given the need to reach customers in mass, “retail-like,” markets, LegalQ’s go-to-market and marketing strategies (and, more particularly, how those strategies entail Google searches, Facebook ads and, more generally, search-engine marketing and search-engine optimization strategies) The iterative process that LegalQ uses refine its app design, improve its customer onboarding and, most interestingly, revise its core revenue model (well after LegalQ’s initial launch) in light of market reactions to its initial business model approach LegalQ’s use of analytical tools to understand the most cost-effective ways to lower customer acquisition costs The importance for LegalQ of making a great senior marketing hire LegalQ’s ambitious (and access-to-justice driven) mission statement (a mission attributable, at least in part, to LegalQ’s participation in the TechStars program).

Episode 37 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- An Interview with Mat Rotenberg, founder and CEO of Dashboard Legal In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Mat Rotenberg, founder and CEO of Dashboard Legal.  On its website (www.dashboardlegal.com), Dashboard Legal writes of its value proposition: "Tired of switching between email threads, apps and workarounds? Dashboard Legal lets you and your team work right from your inbox - by transforming it into a unified workspace for all the materials related to a case or transaction." Mat and Charlie talk about the following topics during this episode:   How Mat's experience working as a law firm deal lawyer led him to build a suite of tools that creates an "inbox-first" universal view of a deal or litigation that helps to solve the organizational and collaboration roadblocks that Mat confronted when he practiced law,   What Dashboard Legal does to systematize legal matter workflows and encourage lawyer-to-lawyer collaboration, while at the same time allowing its users to continue using software that they've long used as part of their day-to-day work (e.g., such as word processing and email apps like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook),   The growing importance of collaboration among legal professionals and the benefits that such collaboration offers those professionals (not least of which is the improvement of one's "lifestyle" at work), and   What approaches Dashboard Legal has taken to market its offering (including participation in partner-channels such as Reynen Court and Jameson Legal Tech) and how important a part the building of relationships with customers plays in Dashboard Legal's marketing.

Episode 36 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast — Interview with Rich Lee, a co-founder and CEO of New Era ADR In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Rich Lee, a co-founder and CEO of New Era ADR.  On its website (www.neweraadr.com), New Era ADR says “Use smarter, more intuitive tools to get to resolution faster with some of the most experienced mediators and arbitrators in the industry. Do it all from home or anywhere in the world on our fully-digital platform. Get everything done in one place, without everyone being in one place. Don’t waste your time, money, or energy on logistics or fighting, make it simple with New Era ADR.” Here are some topics that Rich and Charlie discuss: How Rich made his way from law school to co-founding New Era ADR. How Rich’s experience as a GC and also as a business person at IP-related businesses (where he confronted first hand the expense and inefficiencies of litigating disputes in court) informs his vision for New Era ADR. What’s New Era ADR’s secret sauce when it comes to providing a software-based approach to alternative dispute resolution? (Hint: Among other things, shorter times-to-resolution, a “virtual first” approach, an emphasis on UX and the customer experience, and versatility as a platform that enables New Era ADR to handle not only disputes that involve commercially sophisticated parties, but also disputes that involve consumers and disputes that have A2J implications)? What business successes are Rich and his co-founders most proud of to date.    

Episode 35 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast — Interview with Senne Mennes, a co-founder of ClauseBase In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Senne Mennes, a co-founder of ClauseBase.  On its website (www.clausebase.com), ClauseBase speaks of itself as “.  .  .  [going] beyond simple template editors, offering you all the power you need to draft complex documents.” Here are some of the topics that Charlie and Senne discuss in this episode: How did Senne find his way to co-founding a legal tech startup? What does ClauseBase’s product offering do for lawyers? In what markets does ClauseBase make its product offering available? What marketing and sales channels has ClauseBase found most success (and what such channels have been less successful)? What is ClauseBases’s process for successful customer onboarding? How does ClauseBase avoid becoming “shelfware?” Of what business successes is Senne most proud?

In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Jeremy Small, CEO of Jameson Legal and Jon Bartman, Head of Jameson Legal Tech, a division of Jameson Legal (www.jamesonlegal.com/jameson-legal-tech). On its website, Jameson Legal Tech describes itself as follows: “With a focus on Legal Tech software sales and strategic advice, as well as Legal Tech recruitment, our specialist team is a trusted adviser to Legal Tech Vendors as well as In-House and Private Practice Legal Operations departments.” Here are the highlights what Jeremy, Jon and Charlie discussed during this episode: - How did Jameson Legal Tech “grow” out of Jameson Legal?  - Just what kind of services does Jameson Legal Tech offer the participants in its two-sided market (as of today, those participants consisting of: (i) legal tech companies that need assistance in their marketing and sales efforts and (ii) law firms and in-house legal departments looking to license legal tech software solutions)?  What additional services is Jameson Legal Tech considering offering in the future? - Which legal tech companies currently comprise Jameson Legal Tech’s software solutions platform? - In what markets does Jameson Legal Tech currently offer its services? - What accounts for today’s interest in the creation  of, and participation in, legal tech marketing consortiums like Jameson Legal Tech?

Episode 33 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- Interview with Jonathan Fish and Kyle Richless, co- founders of Cap Gains Inc. and QSBS Expert In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Jonathan Fish and Kyle Richless of Cap Gains Inc. and QSBS Expert (www.qsbsexpert.com). QSBS Expert is Cap Gains Inc.’s first offering, one that helps startup founders, investors, and lawyers (among other startup stakeholders) understand the nuances of a significant US tax exemption that’s available to eligible startups and their investors that qualify for this exemption’s use. Jonathan and Kyle each first explain how their professional backgrounds led them to their co-founding Cap Gains Inc. and the introduction of Cap Gains Inc.’s QSBS Expert offering.  The “main event” follows as Jonathan and Kyle explain just what QSBS is and why it matters to startups and  startup stakeholders.  Hint:  QSBS stands for “qualified small business stock” and refers to what can be a financially significant US federal (and possibly state-level) tax exemption. Pay attention startups first, because there can be “real” money at stake here and second, because the availability of that potential for tax savings, as Jonathan and Kyle further explain, is subject to eligibility and qualification criteria that are chock full of nuance and possible trip wires that, if tripped, can “bust” the tax exemption’s availability.  So, with Jonathan’s and Kyle’s able assistance, we get an overview of the history of the QSBS exemption, its motiving policy and some of the pitfalls to consider (and avoid if possible) to preserve the exemption’s availability for otherwise eligible and qualifying startups and investors. Jonathan and Kyle go on to describe just what kinds of services QSBS Expert offers when it comes to understanding and taking advantage of this exemption.  Given the complexities of the law and regulations applicable to this exemption, QSBS Expert’s service offering can be tax exemption-preserving tool that’s well worth exploring. Charlie, Jonathan and Kyle conclude the podcast with the latter two discussing “words of startup wisdom” (WOSW?) that legal tech startup leaders should find helpful in managing their startup’s business.

Episode 32 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- Interview with Jason Gabbard, founder of JUSTLAW In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Jason Gabbard, the founder of JUSTLAW(www.just.law) a startup that, as it writes on its website, offers families, individuals and small business “legal matters covered by our [monthly] protection plan.” Jason dives right into a recounting of his career and, we learn, it is a varied one from a business standpoint.   After law school, Jason spends four years in corporate law at NYC law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Jason goes on from there (i) to found, in the early 2000’s, a “distributed” law firm, (ii) to create a legal tech startup in 2010 that extracts M&A deal clauses from SEC databases and that, with humans in-the-loop, also analyzes those clauses and (iii) to found Counselytics, another legal tech startup, one that automates much of the analytics that went into Jason’s previous startup’s clause-based work.   Jason has successful exits from both of the above-mentioned startups. And, in fact, for several years works at Conga, the company that acquired Counselytics. All this leads to Charlie and Jason discussing the (over?) abundance of companies in the CLM space and the frothiness in the market for investing in legal tech startup (and in startups, in general). Charlie and Jason next turn to Jason’s latest venture, called JUSTLAW, that aggregates small business demand for legal services and surfaces that demand to solo and small/medium-sized firm practitioners.  What’s of particular note here is that the practitioners charge for their services available on the basis of a tiered monthly subscription model (with the tiers corresponding to different levels of lawyer services). Jason concludes this podcast episode with words of wisdom to other legal tech startup founders/leaders (i) who are eyeing (or may someday eye) an M&A exit, (ii) whose startups are deluged with customer feature requests, (iii) who are building senior level teams and (iv) who are just moving from practicing law to starting up a legal company.

Episode 31 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast - Interview with Michael Levy, Solutions Architect at Tonkean In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Michael Levy, Solutions Architect at Tonkean (www.tonkean.com). Tonkean describes itself on its website as a set of no-code software tools that enables business people (including, of course, lawyers and allied legal professionals) to “Automate complex business processes, fast.” Michael begins the podcast by describing how he arrived at Tonkean. Michael’s journey saw him begin his career as a software engineer. From that role Michael moved on to more customer-facing roles, involving product management and software deployment. Michael next spent several years as a member of Google’s legal operations team. At Google, Michael became a Tonkean customer himself when he became central to the roll-out of Tonkean software to Google’s legal ops team members and others at Google. (At this juncture, Charlie and Michael talk about the increasingly important role that legal operations is coming to play at in-house legal departments worldwide.) Now at Tonkean, Michael helps to bring Tonkean’s process automation software to law firms and in-house legal departments. Michael next describes just what Tonkean’s software does, with an emphasis (not surprisingly) on how Tonkean’s process automation software applies to work carried out by in-house legal departments and law firms. Essentially, Tonkean’s web-based tools gives non-coders the opportunity to use intuitive drag-and-drop functionality to build workflows. These workflows, in turn, permit data of many different kinds to move among the pieces of software that lawyers and allied legal professionals are already familiar with. By way of just a couple of examples, legal ops team members, paralegals and lawyers — who, being subject matter experts when it comes to matters like conflict waivers and client intake procedures — can automate (without needing any coding skills) start-to-finish conflict-waiver workflows or client intake workflows. And, as Michael points our later in the podcast, with Tonkean’s not requiring coding and involving only software with which a lawyer and his or her law firm or legal department colleagues are already familiar, there’s little, if any, change management effort necessary to encourage that use. Charlie asks Michael what it’s like to be marketing and selling to law firms and legal departments out of a company like Tonkean that isn’t devoted exclusively to the legal tech vertical. In answering, Michael notes that Tonkean’s software is aimed at any business person who needs to funnel data through a workflow quickly and efficiently and that the business person in question can certainly be a lawyer. That said, Michael goes on to explain that Tonkean does make a strong effort to be involved with “legal,” including having a membership in CLOC (the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) and having a section dedicated to legal operations in its online learning center.