Conrad Everhard, founder of Flatiron Law Group discusses his career trajectory from Georgetown University to becoming a partner at Big Law firms Jones Day and Brian Cave. He explains why he left BigLaw to found Flatiron Law Group, to provide a more cost effective and efficient way to offer legal services to clients involved in mergers and acquisitions. To do so, the firm leverages a multi-pronged model: flat fees, low overhead, general contract labor to assist with the more labor intensive...

This episode features Stan Shepard, General Counsel of Atlassian, a leading provider of team productivity and collaboration software. Stan discusses his unique career journey from a finance journalist to the current GC of Atlassian. He shares valuable insights into how Atlassian's legal department leverages the company's productivity software products and AI for maximum efficiency. Episode Highlights: [00:00:09]: Introduction and Stan's background - Learn about Stan's journey from finance...

New Era ADR CEO Rich Lee makes a return appearance to Technically Legal to talk about the company’s cutting-edge platform revolutionizing dispute resolution. Rich first came on the podcast in 2021 right as the company launched. Rich discusses the company's mission to provide a faster, more efficient, and cost-effective alternative to traditional litigation and arbitration, the company’s growth and what he has learned from a few years in. Key takeaways: New Era ADR offers a unique...

This episode features Matthew Rasmussen, Founder and CEO of ModeOne, which is an app that provides targeted smart phone data discovery. Matt discusses his journey from a psych major waiting tables to landing a job in eDiscovery in its earliest days-- a job that ultimately helped him land jobs in BigLaw for multiple firms running their litigation technology departments. It was when he was working for O’Melveny & Meyers when he had his "light bulb moment" that led to the creation of...

Jason Heinze originally wanted to be an architect but got into disability law after taking over his father in law’s practice. To establish his client’s disability claims, he would have them manually enter daily notes into a pain journal, but he often had difficulty getting clients to consistently maintain the journals because they might forget and it was a completely manual process. He thought to himself, there has to be an app for that, but when he looked, he found some that were close, but...

Amanda Tuminelli, Chief Legal Officer for the DeFI Education Fund, visits the podcast to discuss her role with the organization and its objectives. (What is DeFi? It is shorthand for Decentralized Finance and the backbone of DeFi is blockchain technology and smart contracts.) The DeFi Education Fund is a nonpartisan research and advocacy group working to explain the benefits of DeFi, achieve regulatory clarity for the future of the global digital economy, and help realize the transformative...

AffiniPay is historically a fintech company with a big presence in legal. Their flagship product is LawPay used by law firms to bill clients and accept payments. Dru joined the company in 2021 and right around that time, the company ventured beyond the world of payment software and acquired MyCase, which is law practice management software used by law firms to keep all case details and documents in a single location, keep track of tasks and streamline client communications. Growing up, Dru...

A conversation with Lucas Moskowitz, General Counsel for financial services company Robinhood. Launched in 2013, Robinhood’s stated mission is to "democratize finance for all" by making it easy for investors to start investing with a few bucks rather than having to be a high roller. Key to this effort is the fact that Robinhood offers commission-free trading and also provides access to cryptocurrencies. The discussion covers various topics, including: Robinhood’s Mission: Lucas explains...

A conversation with Matthew Veale, a European Patent Attorney and UPC Representative at PatSnap, an app that provides users with a comprehensive and user-friendly platform to conduct patent searches. Matthew discusses his experiences from work as an attorney in private practice and a stint at the UK Patent Office before joining PatSnap. Matthew will discuss: The future of AI in patent searches: How PatSnap's new AI component is transforming years of knowledge into a 10-second search. ...

This episode involves two people with very distinguished careers. Bridget M. McCormack who now heads the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and Colin Rule, the founder of ODR.com just acquired by The AAA. Bridget has served in just about every role you can in the legal industry. She started her legal career in legal aid and as a public defender handling trials and appeals. She then moved to teaching law school, first at Yale and then Michigan. After her stint as an educator, she decided...

Dr. Heidi Gardner of the Harvard Business and Law Schools joins the podcast to talk about about latest book Smarter Collaboration and the importance of collaboration in legal teams and in all organizations generally. Smarter Collaboration is Dr. Gardner’s second book and a follow up to Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos. Both books are helpful to those in law because much of Dr. Gardner’s research is based on the many years she studied...

Medex Chief Forensic Officer Brandon Epstein joins the Technically Legal Podcast to discuss the purpose built forensic tool for use in legal proceedings. The company counts legal professionals, law enforcement and journalists as its customers. Medex is used to examine digital video files to establish provenance, detect tampering and identify modifications. Users may also use Medex to identify the device type that created the video. As Brandon explains, the type of hardware used to create a...

Litera’s Haley Altman visits the Technically Legal Podcast to discuss the company’s new software offering: Foundation Dragon–an app powered by artificial intelligence that helps legal professionals advise clients based on market insights drawn from their law firm’s existing data and prior deal points. This is a repeat appearance for Haley. She was first on the podcast in 2018 to discuss the company she had recently launched called Doxly. Founded in 2016, Doxly is a cloud based app that helps...

Attorney Chris Edgar talks about founding Filmtracts- a DIY platform indie film makers can use to create entertainment based contracts for their projects. Chris’ career path started with a clerkship for a future U.S. Supreme Court justice and then long hours as a Big Law litigator. After a few years of legal battles in and out of the courtroom, he realized that maybe his current career path wasn’t for him. That’s because the world of entertainment law and independent film production was...

Studies determined that at least one litigant does not have a lawyer in 75% of civil cases in the United States. The number is even higher when it comes to family law, domestic violence, housing, and small claims matters. But organizations like Oregon’s Commons Law Center are doing something about it. On this episode, Kamron Graham, the Law Center’s Executive Director, talks about the not for profit law firm’s efforts to provide affordable legal assistance to people that make too much to...

Zach Posner discusses the LegalTech Fund, an investment fund he helped start that focuses on legal tech businesses and offers insight on what it takes to build a successful start up. The LegalTech Fund has a solid track record and, if you have listened to a few episodes of this podcast, you’ve probably heard from founders of companies in which the Fund has invested–including Scott Stevenson from Spellbook, Otto Hansen at Term Scout, Tom Dreyfus at Josef, and also Zach’s colleague at the...

This episode is a conversation with Michael Clark the VP Global Head of Digital Transformation and Futurist at MasterCard. He discusses his upcoming book "Data Revolution, The New Currency of You" and what he believes will be a new paradigm in data ownership–that we will actually own our own data and benefit from its value. He also examines what role the law and regulation should play in it. Michael and many others like him, believe that data is going to become a new currency and that to...

In this episode Colin Levy shares insights from his new book, The Legal Tech Ecosystem, his journey into legal tech, and his role at contract lifecycle management company, Malbek as Head of Legal and Chief Evangelist. Conversation highlights: Colin’s journey into legal tech: Colin shares how he first got into legal tech during his time as a paralegal at a big law firm in New York, his decision to work for a year before attending law school and his choice to work in an in-house legal...

Professor Tonya Evans of Penn State Dickinson Law School visits Technically Legal to talk about her book Digital Money Demystified. Professor Evans has pretty much held every job in legal from judicial clerk, to Big Law lawyer and now legal educator. She is also the host of the Tech Intersect Podcast which focuses on Web3 and how it will impact the future of work, wealth and creativity.  In this episode, Professor Evans talks about her journey from risk averse crypto doubter to blockchain...

Despite much ballyhoo and countless articles about them, alternative fee arrangements, or AFAs, have yet to gain widespread traction and the billable hour still reigns supreme for legal billing.   Enter the Leigh brothers, Scott and Digby, and their new legal tech startup, AltFee. The company’s stated goal is encouraging legal professionals to break free of hourly pricing and move to AFAs by using the app to help scope and price legal projects.   The brothers point out that the...

This episode is a conversation with Spellbook co-founder Scott Stevenson about intersection of technology and creativity. Spellbook is a AI contract co-pilot for transactional lawyers that plugs into Microsoft Word. Despite founding a legal technology company, Scott is not a lawyer but is computer engineer by training. As a kid Scott was into video games and in fourth grade he talked his parents into getting him a computer because he wanted to figure out how to create them. By middle school...

John Grant talks about how legal teams can adopt Agile and Kanban project management methodologies to optimize workflows, correct bottlenecks and increase client satisfaction. John is a lawyer and the founder of The Agile Attorney consultancy. As John explains, the traditional project management method is waterfall. A technique often used by technology companies, involving a sequential approach where each stage is dependent on the completion of the previous one. But John is a proponent of...

At an early age, Feargus MacDaeid, the founder of legal tech company Definely, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which is a rare eye disease that breaks down cells in the retina slowly over time causing vision loss. Until he got to college to study computer science, Feargus’ vision was decent, but at university, it began to deteriorate and eventually went blind.  After college he landed a couple of tech jobs but ultimately decided to go to law school.  After law school, Feargus took...

This episode is a conversation with Katherine Porter about her journey from practicing law to founding her own company, Resourceful Lawyer which is a consultancy helping legal teams implement project management techniques into their legal work. Katherine discusses her unique approach to problem-solving in the legal field, which involves design thinking and project management principles. Katherine explains the importance of lawyers understanding client needs, the process of workflow mapping,...