Technically Legal - A Legal Technology and Innovation Podcast

Percipient - Chad Main
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Apr 28, 2022 • 32min

Using AI to Match Clients with the Right Personal Injury Attorney (Victor Bornstein, CEO Justpoint)

Victor Bornstein tells us how Justpoint, the company he co-founded and now heads, is taking advantage of changes to Rules of Professional Conduct to build artificial intelligence that matches personal injury clients to the best attorney for their case. Specifically, the company is taking advantage of changes to Rule 5.4 in Arizona that now permits people other than lawyers to have an ownership stake in law firms and legal services companies. Justpoint lets potential clients leverage AI to find the right attorney for their claim. The company uses a combination of human intake by medical professionals and predictive analytics to identify the right attorney for the job. Before launching Justpoint, Victor and his co-founder had nothing to do with the legal industry. Victor has a PhD in biomedical sciences with an emphasis in immunology and worked in medical, his co-founder worked at Google before launching Justpoint. The pair started the company in 2019 and recently closed a $6.9 million fundraising round.
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Apr 14, 2022 • 40min

How to Build a SaaS Company for Legal (Andy Wilson, CEO Logikcull)

Right out of college with a computer science degree in hand, a buddy helped Andy Wilson (now CEO of SaaS based e-discovery software company Logikcull) get a job at a printing company because Andy’s friend said there was a technology component to the job.  It was the early 2000s and what the printing company was actually doing was printing out email messages so they could be used in a legal matter. The absurdity of printing out something that is inherently digital was not lost on Andy. So, after a couple of years at the printing company, he and a college classmate that also happened to work there launched Logik Systems. At Logik Systems, Andy and his co-founder created software that processed email to make it easier to transfer and review electronically rather than printing them out. Logik Systems was doing great until the economy crashed around 2008. But, it was during this downturn that Andy and his co-founder saw the future of e-discovery software and that future was the cloud. That is when the duo launched Logikcull. It took 4 plus years to develop the software, but they persevered and in 2013 Logikcull went live. Logikcull is an eDiscovery solution that provides user friendly legal software for processing, reviewing, and producing data. The company just celebrated it’s 10th birthday and it continues its upward trajectory toward its goal of democratizing electronic discovery.
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Mar 31, 2022 • 40min

How a Legal Evolution Can Save PeopleLaw – Professor William Henderson (Indiana University School of Law)

“You’re marrying a firefighter. That’s all I’ll ever be.  I’m never going to finish college.”  That’s what Bill Henderson told his soon to be wife many years ago, but thankfully that was not true. Fast forward to today and Bill is now Professor William Henderson, the Stephen F. Burns Chair on the Legal Profession at Indiana University and he has been a law professor for nearly 20 years. Professor Henderson is also the moving force behind Legal Evolution, an online publication focusing on changes in the legal industry with the stated mission of providing lawyers, legal educators, and allied professionals with high-quality information to solve very difficult industry-specific problems. It was almost true that Professor Henderson did not finish college. He dropped out and got a job as a firefighter. But… it was only because he was a firefighter that he ended up going to law school. In the early 90s, during firefighter union negotiations, Bill’s union rep asked him to tag along and take notes. Foreshadowing his career as a professor, not only did Bill take notes, he also did in depth research into prior collective bargaining agreements and into state law so the union team could strike a better bargain. In the end, Bill moved on from note taker to union vice president and eventually took over as lead negotiator. Because of all of this, Bill decided to go to law school at the University of Chicago and became a legal professor. Since entering academia, Bill has done a ton of research and writing on the state of legal services in general, but more specifically, how legal innovation can improve it. In a nutshell, Bill’s research has determined that more and more legal work is focused on commercial law at the expense of “PeopleLaw” –a term he uses to describe legal work done on behalf of individuals (like criminal law, domestic relations law and the like). 50 years ago, legal work was pretty much split 50/50 between PeopleLaw and commercial law. Now that division is 75/25 in favor of commercial law which is causing an access to justice issue.  There is a great need for legal services related to PeopleLaw, but it is too expensive or just doesn’t exist. However, Professor Henderson thinks there are a few things the legal community can do to address this problem: Better use of project management techniques, use of allied professionals, and leveraging legal technology.
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Mar 17, 2022 • 31min

Fisher Broyles: From 5 Attorneys to AmLaw 200 and Doing it all Remotely (James Fisher & Kevin Broyles)

SCENE: Afternoon. Early 2000s. Because the first internet bubble is popping, two tech lawyers find themselves with not much to do so they go to a matinee showing of Black Hawk Down. Those two attorneys are James Fisher and Kevin Broyles. That particular afternoon was not the only slow one for them.  Work for them had dried up and colleagues at their law firm were getting laid off left and right. Although they had opportunities to go to different firms, they started looking around at how their current firm was set up and knew there was a better way of doing things. That is when the seeds were sown for Fisher Broyles. A firm that started with five lawyers and would ultimately join the ranks of the AmLaw 200. From the get-go, James and Kevin concluded law firms had a lot of overhead they probably didn’t need which in turn, required them to charge high rates. Not the least of which they figured, was paying rent. They also understood that while support is important, lawyers are hired for what they know, and not based upon how many support staff a firm has. As a result, they decided Fisher Broyles would be a fully remote, distributed law firm that would run lean and mean. Their business model would permit lawyers to pocket most of their hourly rate rather than it going to pay rent and other office expenses. Fast forward to 2021, Fisher Broyles has almost 300 attorneys and had one of their best years ever bringing in $136 million in revenue.  And they did it by leveraging technology and doing remote work before it was even a thing for most other firms. 
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Mar 3, 2022 • 43min

Code is Law? Blockchain Technology and the Future of Antitrust Law (Thibault Schrepel of Codex and Free University of Amsterdam)

Thibault Schrepel joins the podcast to talk blockchain, antitrust and competition law. He is a professor at the Free University in Amsterdam and on the faculty of the Codex Center at Stanford University. At Stanford he is involved in the Computational Antitrust Project which works to foster the automation of antitrust procedures and the improvement of antitrust analysis. Thibault knew he wanted to pursue a career in antitrust on the very first day of his very first antitrust class during law school. As Thibault recalls, "I remember the very first day when I went to the antitrust class in law school. It was a two hour long class and after one hour, we had a break. I went to my friend, and I said, Well, that's it. That's what I want to do." Thibault is not just into antitrust. He is also really into tech and has a certificate from Harvard for Computer Science for Lawyers, so it makes sense that he likes to study the intersection of antitrust and blockchain technology. Through his study and passion for law and tech, Thibault has concluded that the maxim "code is law" might be true, but there is still a need for external rules to govern tech and computer code. This is especially true for blockchain because he believes that too can be used for anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices. But, Thibault also believes that technology also provides a unique opportunity to identify and protect against antitrust behavior. In fact, he just put out a book entitled Blockchain + Antitrust The Decentralization Formula that explores the relationship between blockchain and antitrust, providing a unique perspective on how law and technology could cooperate.
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Feb 17, 2022 • 37min

Using Legal Tech to Create Sustainable Social Change (Jazz Hampton, CEO Turnsignl)Using Legal Tech to Create Sustainable Social Change (Jazz Hampton, CEO Turnsignl)

De-escalation. That is what Jazz Hampton and two friends from college set out to achieve when they co-founded Turnsignl. An app used during traffic stops to access legal help in real time to de-escalate what is often a very tense situation. Prior to becoming Turnsignl CEO, Jazz was a public defender and ended up doing commercial litigation at a top Minneapolis law firm. It was there that he began to question whether he was putting his law degree to its best use.  While Jazz was still in private practice, Philando Castile, with whom two of three Turnsignl co-founders grew up,  was killed by police during a traffic stop near Minneapolis in 2016. While at a vigil for Castile, Jazz began ask himself how he could use his legal skills for social change. (Jazz is no stranger to police stops either. He has been stopped 12 times in his life and never been cited for anything.)  Although it was Castile’s death that planted the seed for Turnsignl, it wasn’t until the 2020 killing of George Floyd that Jazz and his co-founders decided they could wait no more and founded Turnsgnl.  As Jazz explains, they set out to create a “telelegal” mobile app to connect users with attorneys to advise them during police stops to protect their rights and diffuse the encounters. Despite being a newcomer to the legal tech space, Turnsignl is already making waves. It is one of 15 legal startups in the Startup Alley at the ABA Techshow. Opening night, the companies will face off in a pitch competition. The winner receives a bundle of marketing and advertising prizes. Technically Legal is hosted by Chad Main, an attorney and the founder of Percipient, a tech-enabled alternative legal services provider.
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Feb 3, 2022 • 42min

Reaching Collaboration Nirvana Between Client, Law Firm & Other Legal Service Providers (Michael Callier & Ed Sohn of Factor)

Guests Michael Callier and Edward Sohn of Factor discuss collaboration between in-house legal teams, law firms, and alternative legal service providers. They explore the role of Factor in providing legal and contracting solutions, emphasize the importance of collaboration and partnership, and discuss the intersection of business and legal problems. They also highlight the role of technology in freeing up lawyers' time and enabling them to focus on strategic work.
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Jan 20, 2022 • 24min

Avoiding Tech First Failures When Improving Legal Workflows & Processes with Casey Flaherty (Lex Fusion)

Casey Flaherty, Chief Strategy Officer for Lex Fusion, makes his second appearance on Technically Legal. This time around, Casey discusses his thesis that organizations often turn to technology as an avoidance mechanism for addressing issues with process and culture. Casey has deep experience with legal process from all angles, he started his career as a commercial litigator before moving in house at Kia Motors. From there he launched a legal operations consultancy and started Procertas, a technology training and benchmarking platform. Since Casey was last on the podcast, he has taken on a couple of other roles. He served as Director of Legal Project Management for one of the world’s largest law firms, Baker Mckenzie, and recently took on his current role at Lex Fusion. Casey talks about his legal industry experience, his writing process and explains why it is not a good idea to implement technology before taking a step back to map processes and making sure organizational culture supports change.
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Jan 6, 2022 • 28min

Mike Suchsland (The LegalTech Fund) on Investing in Legal Technology in 2022 and Beyond

In the first episode of 2022, Mike Suchsland of the LegalTech Fund and Bridge Investments talks about investing in legal technology. Mike has been in legal tech before it was even a thing. He started his career with Wolters Kulwer in the 1990s and ultimately ended up climbing high up the corporate ladder at Thomson Reuters. He started as Thomson’s head of legal strategy, moved to the small law business group, ended up running the corporate legal unit, the legal education division and ultimately became President of Legal Business. In that role, Mike was responsible for 10,000 employees and over 3 billion in revenue. In 2014 Mike left Thomson but did not leave the legal tech world. He is and was a board member for several legal tech companies and now spends most of his time investing in legal tech companies as a venture capitalist. Mike explains how he got into venture capital, what investors look for in legal tech companies, the state of legal tech in 2022 and if there really is such a thing as a legal tech unicorn.
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Dec 22, 2021 • 44min

Jim Doppke on the Ethics of Legal Tech and the Duty to Supervise Robots (2019)

Legal ethics attorney Jim Doppke returns for an encore appearance to discuss the impact that legal tech and legal innovation have on the Rules of Professional Conduct and other rules that govern how lawyers practice law. Jim explains how Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 (Lawyer’s Duty of Competence) and 5.3 (Responsibilities Regarding Nonlawyer Assistance) are implicated by advances in legal technology and legal innovation. A comment to Rule 1.1 (and adopted by most states) says that as part of a lawyer’s duty of competence, lawyers must stay abreast of changes in technology. MRPC 5.3 states that lawyers must actively supervise “non-lawyer” assistance they engage to help out on legal matters. Historically, this meant that lawyers needed to supervise others lending them a hand–like a paralegal. However, Jim points out that the rule specifically relates to “assistance” and not just “assistants”. This is significant, because certain legal tech, like artificial intelligence (AI), is really non-lawyer “assistance.” So, as Jim points out, if lawyers are going to use AI, they must supervise the training of the algorithms to ensure accuracy, just like they are obligated to supervise the work of their paralegals and other assistants to make sure their work is accurate. In a similar vein, Jim points out that as the use of ALSPs (alternative legal service providers) increases, there too is another situation in which lawyers must supervise work done by those who may not be attorneys.

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