Ep 249: How The Free Law Project Works to Expand Access to Legal Information, with Cofounder Michael Lissner

05/21/24 • 41 min

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Since 2010, the nonprofit Free Law Project has been working to make the legal ecosystem more equitable and competitive using technology, data and advocacy. It may be best known for CourtListener, its flagship project that houses an immense collection of court orders and opinions, and for its RECAP suite, which is the largest free collection on the internet of court filings and dockets.

But there is a lot more to the Free Law Project, as you will hear from our guest on today’s episode, Michael Lissner, the Free Law Project’s cofounder, executive director, and chief technology officer. Lissner started the Free Law Project while earning his master’s degree at the University of California Berkeley School of Information, with the assistance of cofounder Brian Carver, who was then an assistant professor at the school and who is now copyright counsel at Google.

Since then, the Free Law Project has expanded into a multifaceted source of legal data and tools, all with the goals of providing free access to legal materials and developing technology to enhance legal research and innovation.

The Free Law Project’s data also supports a range of academic research and investigative journalism, including having provided data that fueled the recent Pulitzer Prize awarded to news organization ProPublica for its reporting on the financial conflicts of Supreme Court justices.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Previous Episode

Ep 248: Epiq’s Global Legal Solutions Leader Roger Pilc on How AI Is Transforming Legal Services

In recent months, Epiq, a global company providing technology-enabled legal services, has announced new artificial intelligence and analytics features built using the AI capabilities of Amazon Web Services. These new features include a framework for building, training and deploying bespoke machine learning models as secure APIs for customers; integration of Amazon Bedrock for custom copilot development using a range of commercially available large language models; and other features.

Joining LawNext today to provide details on all this and to explain what it means for Epiq’s clients is Roger Pilc, president and general manager of Global Legal Solutions at Epiq. With Epiq since 2019, Pilc is responsible for driving strategy and execution around organic growth, strategic acquisitions, product development, technology, and innovation for a broad range of products in areas including information governance, forensics, e-discovery processing and hosting, managed document review, and advanced analytics.

Pilc and host Bob Ambrogi talk about Epiq’s evolution from primarily a services company to one that also develops its own proprietary technology, while also integrating with a range of technology partners. They also discuss Epiq’s recent initiatives to use AI to further enhance its products, including the Epiq Service Cloud, Epiq Discovery, and the Epiq AI Platform. We also hear Pilc’s thoughts on how AI will impact the future of legal services and the future of Epiq.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Next Episode

Ep 250: CEO Ross Guberman On How BriefCatch Is Expanding Its Mission to Help Legal Professionals Improve their Writing

This has been a notable year for BriefCatch, a legal technology company devoted to helping legal professionals improve their legal writing. It started nine months ago, with the company’s raise of a $3.5 million seed round, continued with its roll outs of new products and features, and then to its formation of a legal writing advisory panel of judges, advocates and academics.

All of that culminated in BriefCatch’s announcement last week of its hires of three legal tech veterans into key executive roles in marketing, sales and product management, all to help lead it into its next stage of growth and development: Lydia Flocchini as chief marketing officer, Darren Schleicher as chief sales officer, and Kyle Bahr as product manager of AI and other new products.

Ross Guberman, the founder and CEO of BriefCatch, is our guest today to discuss the company’s history, growth, recent news, and future plans – which will include the launch of a suite of AI-enabled products. A former practicing lawyer, he was a legal writing coach and speaker when he conceived of BriefCatch, which he formally launched in 2018.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.