Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

In episode 20 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Stephen Lai, Founder and Managing Director of Conventus Law and VP - Legal Sector Solutions at Zegal. Stephen, based in Hong Kong, is a keen observer of the market for legal tech solutions throughout Asia. As Stephen explains, Conventus Law provides a digital media platform that focuses on the purchasers and vendors of legal tech in Asia. Conventus Law also encourages a conversation that speaks to expanding the set of skills that lawyers bring to their clients to include a deeper appreciation of the business issues those clients face, many of which can be better addressed with the use of legal tech. Stephen elaborates on his view that legal tech vendors would do well to emphasize that their law firm customers needn't "fear" legal tech as a massive disruptor of their business, but instead should understand adoption of legal tech as a necessary incremental change in how law firms approach serving their clients' needs. Charlie and Stephen turn to how Conventus Law is partnering with Zegal, a contract management company operating chiefly in Asia. In its partnership with Zegal, Conventus Law will be rolling out Conventus Docs, which will provide private law firms with the tools to offer in-house lawyers with access to digitized standard documentation. As Stephen sees it, Conventus Docs will do the "heavy lifting" in enabling law firms to digitize documents and make them available those firms' enterprise clients on the Conventus Docs platform. And once made available on that platform, these documents can be expected not only to generate revenue for law firms, but also to provide firms with a new way to market their expertise and, thereby, win the opportunity to do more high-value work for new and existing clients. Charlie asks Stephen to offer a birds'-eye view of the Asian legal tech market, including in his description of that view just how legal tech vendors can best promote actual use of their software by their customers. Stephen notes that avoiding the dreaded "shelf-ware" fate of underused software is best achieved by insuring ease of use, by offering timely and well-designed training (that, in addition to instruction, demonstrates how the software offers "critical services and information" at "critical times") and by leaving users with a "WOW" experience that can rival the experience those users have when using the best designed "consumer" apps on their mobile phones and home desktop computers.  

In Episode 19 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Daniel Porus, Chief Commercial Officer of Legatics (www.legatics.com), a legal tech startup that offers transaction management solutions. Daniel starts off by telling our listeners how he moved from practicing law with firms in New Zealand and Australia, to obtaining a business degree from Cambridge's Judge Business School to meeting with Legatics' founder and deciding, after that meeting, to eschew plans to work in "big tech" and instead join the Legatics team. Charlie and Daniel cover the Legatics product's features and benefits. Those benefits include (1) automating routine aspects of deal-doing, (2) reducing the risk of human error by, among other things, providing a "single source of truth" for the deal, (3) promoting junior lawyer retention at law firms by making the handling of deal work less mind-numbing, (4) accelerating time-to-closing of the deal and (5) with its multi-sided platform feature, enhancing client satisfaction by providing law firm clients with transparency into a deal's progress and with collaboration tools that permit client involvement with aspects of the deal. Daniel also describes how the client involvement/transparency benefits have generated positive marketing spillover effects as clients, having become familiar with Legatics while working on a deal with a law firm that's a Legatics' customer, call for its adoption and use by other of the client's law firms. Daniel explains Legatics' deep commitment to encouraging what it calls "practical adoption" of its product by its law firm customers. By practical adoption, Legatics means avoiding the dreaded "shelf ware" problems, where legal tech software sits unused, "on the shelf," despite a law firm customer's licensing the software in question. As Daniel describes it, Legatics exemplifies its devotion to customer engagement and adoption by creating two teams that take aim at those goals. One such team, the one that focuses on customer success, reacts quickly to customer feedback and provides customer support. The other such team, the one that focuses on customer engagement, takes a more holistic approach to Legatics/customer interactions by helping a customer measure its ROI from Legatics' use, by insuring that potential users of the Legatics' offering are aware of its benefits (including its integrations with other law firm software), by providing plans to its customers for rolling out the software to adoptees and by describing clearly just what "success actually looks like" to current and potential users. Daniel offers one more example of Legatics' commitment to customer "practical adoption." As Daniel relates, Legatics has gone so far as to engage with academics in the field of behavioral science. Legatics has undertaken this engagement in order to, among other things, apply principles from behavioral science in workshops that Legatics conducts with several law firms to drive change-management successes at those firms.

In Episode 18 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Shrey Gosalia, founder and CEO of Docket (www.getdocket.com). We kick off with Shrey describing his journey into legal tech. That journey took him from business school at Chicago Booth to roles in corporate venture capital and a non-legal tech business and then eventually to founding Docket. At this juncture, Charlie and Shrey discuss how Shrey's conversations ("pre-Docket") with a former business school classmate who then worked as a trading firm's compliance officer inspired Shrey to focus on building a solution for in-house lawyers' workflow and related problems (which stemmed largely from having only email, spreadsheet and file storage storage to work with). And that solution (which, of course, is Docket) is designed to be a champion for in-house lawyers that delivers what Docket describes as the in-house legal department's "system of record." In short, as Shrey mentions, Docket is aimed at providing in-house legal departments will tools so those departments can be seen for what they are; namely, not "cost centers," but "centers for excellence." Shrey next describes just what Docket does. As Shrey explains, Docket offers in-house legal departments numerous features and benefits, including: (i) a way of standardizing the sourcing of legal requests from the business people who are the in-house lawyers' clients, (ii) tools for managing -- on one platform that's dedicated solely to legal department matters -- the department's documents, tasks, calendars and other aspects of its workflow and (iii) when it comes to legal department management, a showcase for the department's activities which, among other things, offers charts and dashboards and allows for the creation of KPI's for monitoring and reporting legal department work. Charlie and Shrey conclude the podcast episode by taking up Docket's experience in two well-know startup accelerator programs: (i) 500 Startups, which invites tech startups in a variety of verticals into the program and (ii) the accelerator program operated by Lexis/Nexis, where the program is devoted to startups in the legal tech vertical. Shrey recounts his experiences with both programs in some detail and, in doing, helps clarify the difference between accelerators and incubators and describes the benefits Docket derived from its participation in these programs.

Episode 17 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- Interview with Bill Henderson, Law Professor, Editor of Legal Evolution and Interim Director of Development, IFLP In this, one of the most wide-ranging episodes of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), Charlie Uniman welcomes Bill Henderson. Bill is a law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, editor of the online publication, Legal Evolution (www.legalevolution.org) and Interim Director of the Institute for the non-profit Future of Law Practice (IFLIP) (www.futurelawpractice.org). Charlie and Bill kick off the podcast with Bill describing his interesting journey from college to law school to a law professorship (interesting, especially, because of Bill's spending over a decade between starting and finishing college as a fireman and EMT in the Cleveland area). Next, Bill discusses IFLP's mission, which consists principally on offering online and real-life boot camps (for law students and mid-career professionals) and working internships (at law firms and legal departments) that aim to "equip lawyers with the knowledge and skills that are essential in modern legal practice." In this regard, Bill talks about educating so-called "T-shaped" lawyers who can supplement legal (doctrinal) knowledge and skills with skills that involve technology, design, business decision-making, data analytics and project management. Bill also describes how the traditional "one-to-one consultative" aspects of law practice have involved to include a more "one-to-many" way of practicing law. We learn from Bill about IFLP's ambition to take its programs to a much larger scale than they operate at currently and IFLP's efforts to raise the funds necessary to achieve that scale. Given Bill's role as a law professor, Bill and Charlie turn next to legal education and consider what have been both the accelerators and the retardants of change in how law students are taught in most US law schools. Bill distinguishes how so-called "top tier" law schools can persist in avoiding, to a greater degree perhaps than other law schools, classroom teaching in areas that, while outside the area of traditional doctrinal learning, can have a positive impact on a law student's readiness to practice law upon leaving school for a law firm or an in-house legal department. Bill draws a distinction between (i) on the one hand, the AmLaw top 150 law firms that hire predominantly from the top-tier schools to do clients' "bet the company" lawyering and (ii) on the other hand, in-house legal departments and the remainder of the law firms in the US that handle more day-to-day, but vital, operational client work. With this distinction in mind, Bill calls out the day-to-day work as a "contested area," where an client desire for efficiency and, therefore, cost-effectiveness allow in-house counsel and law firms outside the AmLaw 150 to battle successfully with the upper-echelon firms in garnering legal work and, thereby, to increase hiring demand for law students trained in disciplines that enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Finally, Bill delves deeply into what impedes the adoption of innovative approaches to law practice at so many law firms (and even in-house legal departments) both inside and outside the US. Bill and Charlie talk about cultural and financial barriers to innovation and discuss the impact of exogenous factors (like the worldwide financial crisis that began around 2008 and the worldwide COVID crisis) that can act as forcing functions for the adoption of innovations in the practice of law and the business of delivering legal services. As Bill, quoting a friend, puts it: "necessity [in the form of exogenous factors] is not only the mother of invention, it's also the mother of adoption."

Episode 16 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast with Teruel Carrasco, Chief Revenue Officer at dealcloser In Episode 16 of the of Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Teruel Carrasco, Chief Revenue Officer at dealcloser (www.dealcloser.com). Teruel first talks about how his journey began with working in B2B marketing outside of legal tech. From there Teruel moved on to being involved with private equity investing and startup consulting. And then Teruel describes how he next joined dealcloser to head up revenue and growth. And, as you'll hear from Teruel, it was quite a bit of serendipity in his consulting and investing roles that brought him to his position at dealcloser. Charlie and Teruel next talk about just what kind of product dealcloser offers. As should be clear from its name, dealcloser provides transaction management solutions for law firms and in-house legal departments. Among the things that Teruel mentions in this segment of the podcast are the features that distinguish dealcloser from other players in the transaction management space. Following a pattern established in discussions with previous podcast guests who are involved in a startup's marketing to law firms and legal departments, Teruel and Charlie go over some of the steps that dealcloser takes to market its product. These steps include: (i) going to where innovation-minded lawyers can be found (e.g. trade shows and other conferences), (ii) educating the market with thought leadership content delivered through social media, (iii) hiring a full-time and experienced director of marketing and (iv) marketing to champions at a customer to encourage non-users at that customer to "come aboard." Following this marketing discussion, Teruel talks about dealcloser's customer onboarding efforts. Here, Teruel talks about achieving product "stickiness," and recommends generous use of training videos, together with more standard (but always user-friendly) documentation, virtual training in real-time with users working on actual transactions, and periodic follow-up's both to get feedback and smooth out user interface and user experience kinks. In closing the podcast, Teruel talks about how the COVID crisis has affected dealcloser's customer acquisition efforts. In this regard, Teruel stresses the importance of demonstrating genuine empathy with customers who are confronting work-from-home challenges. Teruel also mentions the silver lining that dealcloser encountered during the crisis as customers showed a greater willingness to consider tech adoption in the face those work-from-home challenges.

Episode 15 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast with Rhys Hodkinson, Head of Growth at Define In Episode 15 of the of Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Rhys Hodkinson, Head of Growth at Define (www.trydefine.com). Rhys first discusses his professional background, describing how he moved from practicing at a UK law firm to earning his MBA in the UK and stepping next to heading growth at Define. Charlie and Rhys next talk about Define's product offering, with Rhys detailing how Define enables lawyers to master the reviewing, drafting, editing of defined terms in their contract documents -- all through an easy-to-use plug-in to the familiar Microsoft Word interface. Rhys goes on to explain why Define's use makes contract drafting more accurate and much faster. Rhys offers pointers on marketing to law firms and legal departments (such pointers including, among other things: (i) finding (and supporting) in-firm and in-house evangelists, (ii) offering social media content and case studies that customers (and potential customers) actually find informative and otherwise of high value, (iii) offering continuing attention (e.g., with regular follow-up's) to existing customers (especially product champions) and (iv) being "present" by attending conferences and engaging with the legal tech community locally and more broadly). From marketing, Rhys provides advice when it comes to a legal tech startup's customer onboarding efforts (here, describing how Define (i) gives priority to user experience and user interface, (ii) makes use of its corps of customer-champions/evangelists, and (iii) persists in its gathering customer feedback -- all with a view to making sure that, once licensed by a law firm or legal department, its customers' users adopt and consistently use Define's product). Charlie asks Rhys what he and his leadership colleagues are most proud of from a management standpoint at Define (hint: its a team that's diverse in its viewpoints, supportive of team members and remarkably well-skilled). Finally, Rhys talks about how the COVID crisis has been a "double-edge sword" as far as leading growth at a legal tech startup goes, with Rhys offering more advice to startup leadership when it comes to empathizing with customers during these challenging times, bringing even greater focus on Define's value proposition during ongoing contact with customers and properly using financial and other incentives to drive sales.

Episode 14 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- Interview with James Quinn, Co-founder and CEO of Clarilis In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews James Quinn, co-founder and CEO of document automation startup, Clarilis (www.clarilis.com). Charlie and James discuss: (i) James' transition from corporate lawyering at Slaughter and May in London to co-founding Clarilis, (ii) how Clarilis' technology nvolves automating the preparation of a suite of highly complex documents (i.e., those with provisions that themselves consist of many "moving parts" that articulate with complicated logic), (iii) the emphasis that Clarilis places on using a very "hands on" customer-success approach by having its team of technologists and lawyers help its law firm and legal department customers to implement the Clarilis technology (thereby driving long-term customer adoption and avoiding the "shelf-ware" fate often suffered by legal tech), (iv) James' and his team's very positive involvement with Slaughter and May's "Collaborate" startup incubator, (v) the impact that the COVID-19 crisis has had on Clarilis' business and (vi) the biggest "mindset" adjustment James had to make in moving from practicing law at a Magic Circle law firm to managing a legal tech startup.

Episode 13 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- Interview with Alexander Sverlov of Atlant Security In this episode, Charlie Uniman, your host of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), interviews cybersecurity expert, Alexander Sverdlov, co-founder of Atlant Security (www.atlantsecurity.com). After a brief discussion of Alex's professional background, Alex gets right down to offering practical ( and immediately actionable) cybersecurity tips for working from home during the COVID 19 lockdown (and for working from anywhere outside an office when the lockdown is finally lifted). These tips include (i) video conferencing protections (including a discussion of both the now popular Zoom video conferencing tools and also Zoom alternatives), (ii) putting cyber protections in place to secure wifi use (including the use of a VPN ("virtual private network") for outside-the-office work), (iii) the importance of insuring the security of one's personal computer (including steps to take to do so), (iv) the oft-neglected security of whatever browser is being used on one's personal computer (citing, especially, the broader protections that ad-blocking browser extensions offer beyond just blocking ads themselves), (v) password and user name cybersecurity "hygiene" (using a password manager and two-factor authentication) and (vi) advice to legal tech startups to architect security at the very outset of the development of their legal tech applications.

Episode 12 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast - An Interview with Tunji Williams, Director of Strategy for Transaction Management at Litera Microsystems In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast, Charlie Uniman, your podcast host (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), talks with Tunji Williams of Litera Microsystems (www.litera.com). Charlie and Tunji kick off the podcast by talking about how Tunji moved from corporate practice at a large law firm to founding dealWIP, a legal tech startup that aimed at becoming a "deal workflow information platform." While at dealWIP, Tunji and his co-founders participated in two prominent legal tech accelerator programs, one managed by LexisNexis and the other managed by the UK law firm, Mishcon de Reya. Charlie and Tunji dive into what accelerator programs can offer legal tech startups (discussing, in particular, what Tunji learned from his participation) and how important it is for a startup to evaluate such programs from a timing standpoint (what is the right time for a startup to join an accelerator?) and from the standpoint of matching an accelerator's features with a particular startup's needs. Tunji next discusses just how much progress legal tech startups have made over the last five years in marketing and selling to the "right" stakeholder decision-makers at law firms and legal department customers. This discussion leads Tunji to describe his current role at Litera, which involves assisting customers in deriving value from Litera's deal management apps so as to encourage better customer engagement with those apps. Tunji goes on to describe the commercial and educational significance of bringing Litera's suite of tools to law schools and law students. Charlie and Tunji conclude by covering (i) what Tunji learned from the demise of dealWIP, (ii) his transition from his founder's role at dealWIP to his role as a member of Litera's team, (iii) how he, along with with others at Litera, devotes time to sketching out what deal management tech will look like decades from now and how doing so informs his day-to-day work and (iv) the importance for Tunji of being dedicated to (and, dare it be said, even in love with) his company's mission and the benefits that executing that mission can bring to Litera's customers.  

Episode 11 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- An Interview with Alice Armitage, Chief Executive Professor of the LexLab at UC Hastings College of Law Episode 11 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) finds your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviewing Alice Armitage, a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law who heads the LexLab at the law school. Charlie delves into Alice's professional background, and learns from Alice that, after law school, she practiced law at a law firm, from there founded two startups (outside of the legal tech area) and moved next to the College of Law at UC Hasting to helm, first, the school's Legal Startup Garage and, now, its LexLab. Alice describes the core of the LexLab as involving classroom instruction in legal innovation topics, an accelerator program for legal tech startups and the staging of events that focus on matters ranging from law practice regulatory changes to legal ops. Alice also describes the unique startup-practice-clinic mission of the Legal Startup Garage at the law school. Charlie and Alice move on to discuss (i) how the private law firm business model can impede adoption of legal tech, (ii) the absence of client pressure on law firms to promote innovation and practice efficiencies, (iii) what many law schools are doing, and also failing to do, when it comes to teaching subjects relevant to legal practice innovations, (iv) how LexLab introduces legal tech startups to law students for interning and beta-testing purposes, (v) whether law schools should include coding and design thinking into their curricula and (vi) how Alice reads the collapse of the Atrium law firm/legal tech company from her vantage point on the West Coast.