Pioneers and Pathfinders is Seyfarth’s podcast about people driving change in the legal industry. Each episode features candid conversation with the people doing the work—lawyers, leaders, founders, teachers, and more. We will hear about their journeys—what they’re building, what they’re seeing, and what others can take from it. Co-hosted by Kevin Young, a Seyfarth partner and employment litigator who puts new tools and ideas to work in client service, and Zeynep Ersin, Seyfarth’s Chief Innovation & Strategic Design Officer, the podcast offers a front-line view into where the legal industry is headed Pioneers and Pathfinders was founded by J. Stephen Poor, Chair Emeritus of Seyfarth Shaw, a longtime industry leader who helped pioneer the application of Lean Six Sigma principles to legal service delivery.
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September 3, 202639 min
Jennifer Leonard Returns
Today we're joined by Jennifer Leonard, founder of Creative Lawyers. Jennifer works with law firms, legal departments, and law schools to help legal professionals navigate innovation, change, and the rapid evolution of AI. We'll discuss the future of legal education, the skills lawyers will need in an AI-enabled profession, the importance of design thinking and human-centered problem solving, and why this may be one of the most exciting moments in the history of legal practice. Jennifer also shares the inspiration behind her new book, Unprecedented: Designing a Human-Centered Law Firm When Everything is Changing, and her perspective on how lawyers and legal organizations can prepare for what's next. Read the full transcript here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Jennifer-Leonard-Returns.pdf
August 20, 202630 min
Greg Dickason
Today, we're joined by Greg Dickason, executive vice president and chief technology officer for global legal business at LexisNexis. Greg has led technology and transformation initiatives across industries and around the world, so he brings a unique perspective on how organizations adopt innovation and navigate periods of rapid change. We'll explore the evolution of legal technology, what comes next in the age of AI, and how LexisNexis's new Customer Innovation Lab is creating a hands-on environment where customers and innovators can work together to develop the next generation of legal solutions. Read the full transcript here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Greg-Dickason.pdf
August 6, 202628 min
Ari Kaplan
Today we're joined by someone who has spent decades at the intersection of law, technology, innovation, and leadership. Ari Kaplan is a former practicing attorney, a widely recognized legal industry analyst, researcher, author, and speaker who has dedicated his career to helping the legal profession understand and navigate change. Over the past two decades, he has conducted extensive research, advised leaders across law firms and corporate legal departments, and become one of the industry's most trusted voices on innovation and the future of legal services. Ari has a unique vantage point into what legal leaders around the world are thinking about: AI adoption and innovation strategy, talent development, change management, and the evolving relationship between law firms and their clients. We're excited to tap into those perspectives and explore what he's seeing across the legal industry right now. Read the full transcript here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Ari-Kaplan.pdf
July 16, 202634 min
Josh Levy
One of the things we talk a lot about on this podcast is what it takes to drive innovation in industries that are not always quick to change, and today's guest is someone who's been working on that challenge from the inside out. Today we are joined by Josh Levy, co-founder and CEO of Document Crunch, an AI platform focused on making contracts more usable for the people who rely on them every day. Josh's perspective is unique in that his work in innovation is really grounded in experience. He started in construction management, moved into construction law, and then went on to lead legal and contracting efforts on major billion-dollar projects. It's a great example of innovation that doesn't just introduce new technology, but changes how people interact with legal information altogether. Read the full transcript here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_JoshLevy.pdf
June 18, 202631 min
Gregory Mostyn
Today we're joined by Greg Mostyn, CEO and co-founder of Wexler. Wexler is a fact intelligence platform built for litigation teams. Wexler extracts events, timelines, and contradictions from large evidence sets and links everything back to its source, helping litigators build a clear factual picture from what could be hundreds of thousands of documents. In this episode, we get into what it really takes to bring new tools into major law firms, how litigators are actually using AI to change the way they build cases, and the elephant in the room—what would actually happen to the billable hour? We also dig into where legal AI is headed, what Greg wishes he'd known when he first started, and what might soon look outdated about the practice of law. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Greg-Mostyn.pdf
June 4, 202633 min
Charlotte Alexander
Today's guest is Professor Charlotte Alexander, a leading scholar whose work has focused on the efficiency, transparency, and openness of the court system, particularly in civil litigation. Charlotte is a Harvard Law-trained scholar whose research has been published in some of the most prestigious journals in the world, including Science, the NYU Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. Today, Charlotte leads the Law, Data, and Design Lab at Georgia Tech and is Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business. Charlotte and her team at Georgia Tech use AI and machine learning to process massive amounts of court data and surface of patterns and disparities that have long been buried in millions of pages of legal text. Charlotte's work has attracted funding from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Labor, and Google. She serves on the AI Committee for the Georgia Judiciary and was a Fulbright Scholar. Simply put, Charlotte has been doing this work long before AI and machine learning became mainstream, bringing a perspective that is both deeply technical and human-centered. In today’s conversation, we’ll explore the challenges hidden in court data, what AI can and can’t do for the justice system, and ethical questions that come with deploying these technologies at scale. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_CharlotteAlexander.pdf
May 21, 202634 min
Dr. Larry Richard Returns
Today's guest, Dr. Larry Richard, practiced as a trial attorney for 10 years before earning a PhD in organizational psychology. Today, he is a leading expert on why lawyers behave the way they do. For over 30 years, Dr. Richard has been researching how lawyers behave and why. He founded LawyerBrain LLC, which advises the leaders of major law firms on the human side of running a practice—things like culture, leadership, change management, resilience, and collaboration. Here are the 7 outlier personality traits that characterize lawyers, according to Dr. Richard's research: • Much higher level of skepticism than the general public • Much higher need for autonomy • Higher level of abstract reasoning—lawyers like using their intellect to solve problems, but also like to argue • Higher level of urgency—lawyers want closure, are impatient • Lower level of empathy—less inclined to take the perspective of others • Lower level of sociability—i.e., not very comfortable with emotional vulnerability, very private, guarded about personal issues • And, the most important one—lawyers are dramatically and pervasively low in resilience (i.e., 20% lower average resilience score than the general public, and 90% of lawyers have a resilience score in the bottom half of the scale! That makes us thin-skinned, insecure, defensive, and easily wounded.) Dr. Richard and his wife, D'Arcy Lyness, PhD, also a psychologist, have just written a book entitled Thin-Skinned: Why Lawyers Are So Low in Resilience, and the New Science That Can Help. It will be published by the American Bar Association in July of 2026. The book explains why lawyers are so consistently low in resilience, and then offers over 50 different scientifically supported self-help practices that can help lawyers build resilience, manage stress, and improve overall well-being. Join us on this episode today to explore why lawyers, according to Dr. Richard, are among the least resilient professionals in the workplace. We talk about how the deeply ingrained skepticism of attorneys is colliding with the unprecedented pace of change brought on by AI and a rapidly evolving legal landscape. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Dr.-Larry-Richard-Returns.pdf
May 7, 202628 min
Zeynep Ersin and Kevin Young
Today, we meet our new co-hosts, Kevin Young and Zeynep Ersin. Kevin is a Seyfarth partner and employment litigator who puts new tools and ideas to work in client service, and Zeynep is Seyfarth’s Chief Innovation & Strategic Design Officer, focused on embedding a culture of innovation across the firm. As we launch the next chapter of the podcast, Zeynep and Kevin sit down with the person who built and led this podcast from the very beginning: Steve Poor, Chair Emeritus of Seyfarth and a longtime industry leader who helped pioneer the application of Lean Six Sigma principles to legal service delivery. In today's conversation, Kevin, Zeynep, and Steve discuss the evolution of the legal profession and legal tech, how to define "innovation," and the way podcasts promote learning and innovation, among many topics. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Zeynep-Ersin-and-Kevin-Young.pdf
April 8, 202625 min
Fifth Anniversary, Part II
This episode brings Steve Poor's role as host of Pioneers and Pathfinders to a close. It has been a wonderful five-year ride with fascinating guests sharing intriguing insights on the past and future of the profession. We've learned an enormous amount from each of them, and we appreciate their contribution to what are important dialogues about the future of the profession. To everyone who has listened in to the conversations, thank you. We know the demands on your time, and to think you would make space for this podcast is humbling. Steve wishes all of you peace and serenity as you navigate a rapidly changing, chaotic world. Our listeners should know: Pioneers and Pathfinders will continue with Seyfarth’s Zeynep Ersin and Kevin Young taking over as hosts. Stay tuned—an announcement about their first episode is coming in the weeks ahead. And now, we wrap up with the second part of Steve's conversation with Lorie Almon, Seyfarth's Chair and Managing Partner. Stay strong, and as always, thanks for listening. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Fifth-Anniversary-Part-2.pdf
April 1, 202625 min
Fifth Anniversary, Part I
Today we recognize two milestones for this podcast, and thus, we have a special two-part discussion. With this episode, we celebrate five years of over 200 individual guests drawn from all corners of the legal profession. Each guest has been incredibly generous with their time and ideas, and we have learned an enormous amount from them. It has been a wonderful experience. Additionally, these episodes mark the conclusion of Steve Poor's role as host of the podcast. Steve appreciates all our listeners who have gone on this journey with him. These two concluding episodes contain our conversation with Seyfarth's Chair and Managing Partner, Lorie Almon. In part one, Lorie and Steve reflect on the history of innovation in the profession—and at Seyfarth specifically. Next week, we end with a discussion of the current and future state of Big Law, from Lorie's perspective as someone running a Big Law firm. Thanks to Lorie for making the time to join us. We hope you enjoy listening to the conversation. As always, thanks for sharing your time with us. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_Fifth-Anniversary-Part-1.pdf
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