Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

Beyond Generic AI: Luminance's Specialized Approach to Legal Contract Intelligence - Episode 65 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- A conversation with Eleanor Lightbody, CEO of Luminance In this episode, recorded at the Legal Tech Fund Summit in Key Biscayne, Florida, host Charlie Uniman interviews Eleanor Lightbody, CEO of Luminance, about the company's innovative AI-powered legal technology platform and its impact on the legal industry. Key Discussion Points Luminance's origin story: Founded in 2015 by Cambridge mathematicians responding to lawyers' needs for automation of repetitive tasks The company's proprietary Legal Pre-trained Transformer (LPT) model and its advantages over generic large language models How Luminance's AI knows when to defer to human judgment, building trust with legal professionals The platform's evolution from serving law firms to enterprise clients, including AMD, Koch Industries, and DHL User-friendly interface: "Push-button" simplicity in Microsoft Word integration Real-world ROI examples, including recovery of missed early payment discounts Key business metrics for scaling legal tech companies

In this episode of the Legal Tech Startup Focus Podcast, host Charlie Uniman interviews Jack Weinberger, co-founder of Ajax (www.joinajax.com), a cutting-edge AI-powered timekeeping solution designed specifically for law firms. Join Charlie Uniman, your podcast host, and Jack as they explore: The challenges lawyers face in accurately tracking their billable hours and their impact on law firm revenue. The origins of Ajax were born from a personal experience of witnessing the tedious and time-consuming nature of manual timekeeping. The unique features and benefits of Ajax, highlighting its seamless integration with widespread practice management software and its intuitive user interface. How Ajax helps lawyers recover two to three billable hours per week, on average, by capturing time spent on short tasks that are often overlooked. The importance of user-friendly design in legal tech and how Ajax draws inspiration from successful consumer apps to create an enjoyable user experience. Ajax's significant impact on its customers includes a compelling story of a law firm that chose Ajax over a competitor after a head-to-head trial. The importance of seeking out advisors with expertise in areas beyond the legal field, particularly in product design, to ensure the development of genuinely user-friendly solutions. Don't miss this insightful conversation! Tune in to learn how Ajax is helping lawyers work smarter, not harder, and maximizing their earning potential.

In this episode of the Legal Tech Startup Focus podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Gary Senga, the CEO of LexCheck. This company has been at the forefront of legal technology for nearly a decade. We delved into Gary's journey as an entrepreneur, including his previous startup, Intelligize, which LexisNexis acquired, and how that experience shaped his approach to LexCheck. Gary provided an insightful overview of LexCheck, emphasizing its evolution from a natural language processing (NLP) development shop to a leader in AI-driven contract review solutions. We discussed their latest offering, LexCheck Insights, which combines NLP with large language models (LLMs) to create a powerful contract review tool. Gary highlighted the unique features of LexCheck Insights, including its ability to generate playbooks in minutes and its best-in-class redlining capabilities. As we explored the competitive landscape, Gary explained how LexCheck distinguishes itself from other players in the market. He pointed out the limitations of traditional LLMs in contract review and how LexCheck's proprietary pre-processing and post-processing technologies enhance the quality and comprehensiveness of contract analysis. This nuanced approach allows LexCheck to address the complexities of legal documents that many competitors overlook. In discussing marketing and sales strategies, Gary candidly shared that there is no secret formula for success. He stressed the importance of hard work and a balanced approach to lead generation, combining both inbound and outbound strategies. He noted that legal tech sales often require a hands-on approach, as the legal industry has historically been slow to adopt new software solutions. Gary offered valuable insights on onboarding for legal tech entrepreneurs. He advised against assuming that users will intuitively understand the software and emphasized the need for a thorough onboarding process. He encouraged startups to invest time and resources into helping users become comfortable with their products to avoid the dreaded "shelfware" phenomenon. As we wrapped up our conversation, Gary reflected on the milestones that have brought him the most pride over the past ten years, particularly the joy of seeing customer renewals and the professional growth of his team members.    

In this episode of the Legal Tech Startup Focus podcast, I welcome Damien Riehl, VP, Solutions Champion, at vLex and a leader at SALI (Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry). Damien provided an insightful overview of vLex, a legal data/legal data science company that boasts an impressive repository of over a billion legal documents from the United States and worldwide. He explained how vLex utilizes data science to tag and structure this vast amount of information, enabling users to run large language models (LLMs) across the data to answer complex legal questions. We also explored the significance of having well-structured data and how SALI contributes to this by providing a comprehensive taxonomy of legal concepts, dramatically enhancing legal data's usability. As we delved deeper, we discussed the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) concept and how vLex employs a five-stage process to increase the likelihood that the legal answers provided by vLex’s LLMs are grounded in reliable data. Damien elaborated on how this process not only retrieves relevant cases but also analyzes their validity and relevance, providing users with a robust legal analysis that would typically take hours of work for a lawyer. We also touched on the implications of generative AI for the legal profession, particularly how it could disrupt traditional billing models. Damien highlighted the advantages for plaintiff-side lawyers who can leverage VLex’s technology to save time and increase profitability while addressing the potential challenges for defense-side lawyers relying on hourly billing. The conversation then shifted to the competitive landscape of legal tech, where we discussed the risks posed by large tech companies potentially absorbing legal tech innovations. Damien emphasized the importance of having unique data sets and value propositions to stand out in a crowded market, warning that companies that merely act as wrappers around existing LLMs without offering additional value may need help to survive. Towards the end of our discussion, we explored the future of AI in legal tech, particularly the integration of symbolic reasoning with neural networks. Damien shared his insights on how combining these two approaches could enhance AI's reasoning capabilities, making it more effective in the legal domain. We concluded with a discussion on the importance of free access to legal data and how it could foster innovation and competition in the legal tech space. This episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone interested in the intersection of law and technology, particularly those looking to understand how data science and AI are transforming the legal landscape.  

After Charlie introduces Mike and congratulates him on the recent Time of London article about Contend, Charlie and Mike discuss: Just what it is that Contend (at https://contend.legal) does to provide safe, accessible, and affordable information for "regular people" when those people confront a legal issue (principally, providing both signposts to information resources (often secondary sources aimed at non-professionals) and connecting people to legal professionals and other organizations that can provide additional help) Why Contend at present operates only in England and Wales (primarily because (i) the UK's regulation of the legal services delivery system is less hidebound by outdated and overly broad "unauthorized practice of law" rules and (ii) the UK's legal innovation culture is so well developed) How Contend markets its product offerings (initially focussing on paid Google ads, now coming to rely more on organic Google search of access-to-justice content that Contend creates, and partnering with A2J nonprofits and other brand-building efforts) The significant business challenge Contend has so far faced (customer acquisition - and, in particular, conveying why Contend is a service provider that consumers can trust) and the most significant "win" that Contend is to date most proud of (having as significant and favorable an impact on people's lives as Contend has had) Link to Times of London article about Contend: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/we-use-ai-to-make-justice-more-accessible-to-ordinary-people-fk78crxtt

In this podcast episode, Chris and your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, discuss:   What Aderant’s (https://www.aderant.com) software offers its large law firm customers generally and, most significantly, how Aderant’s new offering, 'Stridyn,' brings a real platform technology to Aderant’s suite of practice management and related tools. The Stridyn technology enables Aderant’s customers to integrate all Aderant tooling and third-party software seamlessly.   How Aderant is bringing GenAI’s natural language processing features (and other machine learning architectures) to Aderant’s software suite, especially with Aderant’s MADDI “legal assistant.” This innovative feature has the power to significantly reduce the time spent on routine tasks, allowing legal professionals to focus on more strategic and value-adding activities.   How to understand the true meaning of 'cloud-first' and 'cloud-only' in legal tech use for law firms. Chris also explains how a legal tech vendor’s robust security and privacy features are not just crucial, but non-negotiable for encouraging the adoption of cloud-based software by legal tech customers, ensuring their data is always safe and protected.   Chris shares valuable insights for legal tech startup leaders on the subject of legal tech software pricing. He emphasizes that a 'value-based, ear-to-the-market' driven pricing strategy is key to gaining market share. He cautions against the risky path of bottom-up cost-plus pricing, advocating for a pricing approach that aligns with the value the product brings to the market.

Podcast host, Charlie Uniman, and Jim cover the following in this episode:   How Jim’s undergrad major in computer science and his graduation from law school took him from his first job as a lawyer doing document review to working for over a decade in e-discovery.    Eventually leaving e-discovery work to found his own company offering services outside the legal tech field, Jim nonetheless kept track of the immense benefits accruing to document review from the use of NLP and, eventually, GenAI solutions.    Jim realized how these GenAI-driven solutions could solve longstanding problems with less up-to-date e-discovery solutions. With this realization, Jim returned to the e-discovery field to start his own business, eDiscoveryAI (www.ediscoveryai.com), and bring the benefits of GenAI to e-discovery customers.   Jim explains how GenAI-driven e-discovery tools advance e-discovery far beyond the levels of accuracy achievable from the predictive coding tooling previously used in e-discovery - all at a lower cost and with faster time-to-value.   Jim explains how, by operating as a nimble startup with virtually no bureaucracy to get in the way, Jim and his colleagues at eDiscoveryAI can get closer to the customer and build customer-requested features more rapidly than his big-company competitors.

Your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, and Peter discuss: Peter’s professional background and his founding of Titans (https://www.titans.legal) and the creation of the Legal Tech Trends newsletter (https://www.legaltechtrends.com/) Adoption trends, including the factors promoting (or hindering) legal tech adoption by large law firms Where large law firms are when it comes to the GenAI “hype cycle” Peter’s most contrarian view on legal tech What are the biggest mistakes (“own goals”) or oversights that legal tech vendors suffer from Peter’s (surprising views) as to what the blue ocean spaces are in the legal tech competitive landscape

Tanguy's and Mike's Respective Backgrounds and Path into Legal Tech: Tanguy is an engineer with advanced degrees (including an MBA) from MIT and experience in venture capital, notably early-stage investing in legal tech startups (one of such startups being Ironclad) Mike has a background that includes working at the Federal Reserve, McKinsey, and co-founding a company that applied AI in the insurance space. Mike’s experience with AI and legal/regulatory challenges contributed to starting Paxton. Paxton's Recent Award: Celebrated being one of the winners at the 2024 ABA Tech Show Startup Alley Paxton's Technology and Approach: Focuses on developing industry-specific, application-specific, and firm-specific legal language models for greater accuracy, response speed, and security. The data for model training includes public domain legal documents, emphasizing legal-specific training over general-purpose models. Paxton enables customization for firms by allowing connections to internal knowledge sources without training the model on client-specific data unless requested. Applications of Paxton: Legal Research: Provides access to laws, regulations, and court rulings across all states and federal levels. Document Drafting: Uses a vast corpus of legal documents to assist in drafting accurate first drafts of legal documents. Document Analysis: Offers document analysis and Q&A capabilities for large volumes of documents, ensuring data privacy and governance for firms. Use Case for Training Young Lawyers: Paxton aids in training younger lawyers by allowing them to ask questions and practice without fear of judgment, enhancing their learning and confidence. Future Roadmap: Paxton plans to develop more advanced language models, connect to more data sources, and execute multi-step workflows for synthesized answers from various data sources. Advice for Legal Tech Startups: Tanguy and Mike emphasize the importance of being customer-centric, seeking feedback, and iterating based on user input to improve and refine the product.

In this podcast episode, Jackie shares her personal journey from working as a lawyer to founding Clearbrief, an AI-powered litigation analysis tool that integrates with Microsoft Word to assist with research, citations, and document management. Jackie and Charlie discuss the challenges women founders face in getting venture capital attention and support, even when their offerings are high quality. Jackie spoke about the importance of women legal tech startup leaders speaking confidently about their product and its market prospects (especially when, as was the case with Jackie’s own early product development efforts, the assessment of product prospects is based on feedback arising out of literally hundreds of customer interviews). Charlie and Jackie also talk about the difficulties of marketing a product to senior law firm decision-makers (who, after all, control budgets) based not only on the product’s firm-wide and enterprise-wide benefits but also on the product’s prospects for improving the quality of life for junior lawyers and paralegals. Charlie and Jackie cover the implications of AI on the legal profession, including AI’s potential impact on billing practices as technology continues to drive efficiency.