Ep. 003 Interview with Gabe Teninbaum of Suffolk Univ Law School

10/21/19 • 35 min

In this, the third episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus podcast, Charlie interviews Gabe Teninbaum. Gabe is a law professor and legal technologist at Suffolk University Law School, where he is also Director of the Institute on Legal Innovation & Technology (LIT), the LIT Concentration (akin to an undergraduate major), and the LIT Certificate (an online program for legal professionals). Gabe also publishes the Lawtomatic newsletter, a weekly compilation of articles about legal tech that Gabe selects for its readership.

Gabe and Charlie cover a lot of ground during the podcast, involving principally the intersection of legal tech and legal education. Listeners will learn from the podcast: (i) how Gabe's recent tweet proposing that law schools partner with legal tech companies "doing cool things" planted the seed for Gabe's discussion with Charlie, (ii) how the introduction of legal tech into the law school curriculum benefits law students by not only teaching them about a particular legal technology's features, but also by having them use that technology in-class and in clinical projects (the students don't just "talk the talk" about what the tech does, but actually "walk the walk" by using the tech to solve legal problems), and (iii) how the legal tech companies themselves benefit from the partnership with law schools (the companies get detailed and meaningful feedback on their tech from student users, hone their product stories as they engage with law students and locate potential champions of their tech upon the students' graduation and entry into not just BigLaw law firms, but also small and medium-size law firm and legal departments where they can immediately influence tech-buying decisions).

Gabe also explains how Suffolk and other law schools can marry their traditional pedagogy of teaching legal doctrine with their newer teaching efforts that are directed to familiarizing students with new legal practice methods that involve technology use and new business models in use at law firms and other alternative legal service companies that are altering how legal services are delivered. From that starting point, Gabe goes on to explain (i) how expert systems technologies can actually enhance the teaching of legal doctrine, (ii) how his students' course work has them diving deeply into artificial intelligence use cases (for example, employing machine learning to build a legal aid tool that helps address immigration and housing issues and that is accessible online) and (iii) why it's become easier in recent years to introduce even cutting-edge technologies like machine learning to law school faculty and the student body for use in the law school's curriculum.

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Ep. 002 Interview with Haley Altman of Doxly

This episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus podcast finds Charlie interviews Haley Altman, the founder and CEO of Doxly. Doxly is a transaction management platform for law firms and legal departments.

Charlie and Haley talk about what took Haley from a law firm partnership to the leadership of a legal tech startup, how Haley got Doxly off the ground with the assistance of a startup studio, how Doxly is meeting the challenge of offering both a cloud-based and on-premises solution for its customers (and what Haley sees to be the current status of “cloud acceptance” by those customers), how Haley’s CEO role at Doxly has evolved in the three years since its founding, the importance of hiring to achieve diverse points of view and also how Doxly’s approach to on-boarding customers has evolved during that period.

Charlie also asks Haley about Doxly’s recent acquisition by Litera, another legal tech company. In this part of the discussion, Haley talks about what took her team, her board and her investors on the road to Doxly’s being acquired, what the most important factor that Haley bore in mind while pondering whether an acquisition made sense at that point in Doxly’s history and what best positioned Doxly to reach a successful acquisition closing once Haley and others on her team decided that an acquisition was the right step for all concerned.

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Ep 004 Interview with Jeroen Plink of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions

In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus podcast, Charlie Uniman, your host, interview Jeroen Plink. Jeroen, as many of our listeners know, is the CEO of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions. Jeroen generously shares a great store of legal tech-related business knowledge from which legal tech startups, and their investors and customers, can benefit greatly.

After a brief bit of background about Jeroen's wide-ranging career in legal tech and a discussion of the Cliffords Chance Applied Solutions group that Jeroen leads, Charlie poses the following questions:

(i) Given the importance of timing when it comes to introducing legal tech into the market, what law firm/legal department/lawyer "pain points" are particularly ready today for a legal tech remedy? Jeroen provides four "pain point" examples. Legal tech startups - get cracking on these software opportunities!

(ii) Are there one or more keys to persuading lawyers and other legal professionals to actually use a pain-point remedying legal technology purchased by their firms (e.g., ease of use, integration with legacy tech, client demand)? Jeroen has a singular recommendation in answer this question. (Hint: It's all about product roll-out,)

(iii) Is there a trend emerging among BigLaw law firms to "productize" their legal advice offerings in order to deliver more or less routine legal work not only more efficiently, but also more widely to existing (and also perhaps newly-served) client segments? Jeroen surprises with the distinction he draws in answering this question.

(iv) Is Clifford Chance Applied Solutions open to purchasing legal tech in addition to building tech solutions itself? In short, Jeroen answers "yes;" but there's much more to this answer than just a "yes."

(v) Is institutional investor funding "reserved" only for those legal tech startups that can offer what can be called "quasi-unicorn" types of financial exits (i.e., less than the $1 billion or more "standard unicorn" valuation benchmark, but still in the high tens or more millions of dollars of exit value)? Here, Jeroen answers "no." And do listen to his complete explanation to his answer; it's an encouraging one.