Technically Legal - A Legal Technology and Innovation Podcast

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Eric Farber, attorney and writer, visits the Technically Legal Podcast to talk about Creators Legal, a LegalZoom like app for creators and those in the entertainment industry. Creators Legal offers self serve industry contracts drafted by experienced lawyers. It makes sense that Eric launched a legal tech company for creative types. He started his career in the entertainment industry working for a talent agency and then headed up business affairs for a movie studio. Ultimately he moved to private practice and represented entertainers and athletes. In fact for many years, he represented Amaru Entertainment which released Tupac Shakur’s posthumous music. In 2008, with the economy in shambles, Eric, like many, had to pivot and launched Pacific Workers which was initially a workers compensation law firm for athletes, but later came to represent workers from all fields. So, how is that Eric decided to launch a legal tech company? One of Eric’s law clerks pointed out that Eric always had great business advice, but he never used it himself. That comment resonated with Eric and that’s when he decided to launch Creators Legal. Based on his experience in the entertainment world, he knew the vast majority of those creating art and intellectual property could not afford proper legal representation to protect their rights. What Eric saw is an access to justice issue and set out to do something about it. The result is a site that creators can go to and find legal documents to help them protect their rights and create businesses around their art. Although historically Eric was on the legal side of the entertainment industry, he is also a creator. He wrote a book a couple of years ago called The Case for Culture: How to Stop Being a Slave to Your Law Firm, Grow Your Practice, and Actually Be Happy.

The ransomware episode. October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so how couldn't we do this episode? Our guests are Kelly Geary, National Practice Leader of Executive Risk & Cyber/Professional Services Claims for EPIC Insurance Brokers, and Rich Gatz, Claims Counsel for Coalition, a Silicon Valley cyber insurance company. While both Kelly and Rich have law degrees, they have worked in insurance for a long time. Both got started with cyber insurance and incident response in the early days. On the show, they talk about the history of cyber insurance coverage and what parts of ransomware and cyber incident response insurance covers. To close out the conversation, they explain what goes on behind the scenes in a cyber attack response.

Blockchain. Crypto mining. Proof of stake. Smart contracts. Non Fungible Tokens (NFT). DAOs. Crypto regulation. We talk about all of the above and more with Lewis Cohen of the blockchain focused law firm of DLx Law. Lewis breaks down what a blockchain network is and how transactions are recorded and verified on the network. He also talks about the legal and intellectual property implications of NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations. Lewis also touches on recent efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies and blockchain businesses.

Otto Hansen, the founder of Term Scout, visits Technically Legal to talk about the company he founded that uses machine learning to analyze and rate contracts. Specifically, it analyzes contracts to determine whether they are in line with industry standards and how vendor or customer friendly they are. The goal of Term Scout’s rating system is to cut down on contract negotiation and eliminate the back and forth about uncontroversial terms so the parties can focus provisions that will require more give and take before they are finalized. Term Scout is not Otto’s first start up. Otto is a lawyer who practiced for a few years before launching Term Scout, but prior to entering the legal world, he worked at a start up that was making ski gloves. It was his experience with the ski glove company that actually inspired Otto to go to law school.