LawNext

At just 17 years old, Joshua Browder made international news when he created DoNotPay, a chatbot that helped appeal parking tickets, reportedly saving motorists in the U.S. and UK some $16 million. Now 21, he has just released a series of apps designed to help consumers solve common legal problems without…

Kevin O’Keefe believes that lawyers get their best work from relationships and a strong word-of-mouth reputation, and that blogging is the perfect way to build relationships and reputation. In 2003, he founded LexBlog, a company devoted to helping lawyers and law firms launch their own blogs. Today, LexBlog has grown to…

What if a lawyer could know how a judge is likely to rule in a case or how heavy is a judge’s workload? Rick Merrill was a litigator at a large law firm who became frustrated over his inability to get meaningful information about the judges before whom he appeared. So last…

Earlier this year, Mark Britton left Avvo, the often-controversial company he founded in 2006 and led as CEO, after selling it to web behemoth Internet Brands. Explaining his departure in a memo to his staff, he wrote, “It’s time for me to go.”

In the latest episode of LawNext, Britton reflects on his 12 years…

In July, Thomson Reuters unveiled Westlaw Edge, the next generation of its legal research platform that uses artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to help legal professionals find answers and perform research more efficiently. The engineering of the AI that went into that was spearheaded by Dr. Khalid Al-Kofahi, vice president of research…

Should legal ethics rules be changed to allow non-lawyer ownership of legal services providers? So controversial is the question that it was major news in July when the State Bar of California voted to appoint a task force to study and make recommendations on the issue. What spurred the bar to take this action was…

In September 2017, venerable Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy launched Fuse, setting aside a portion of its London office for a collaborative innovation space to develop and test new legal technologies, and it named lawyer Shruti Ajitsaria to head the project. On the latest episode of LawNext, Ajitsaria joins me to discuss why…

Thirteen years ago this week, in 2005, I sat down in a recording studio in front of a fancy boom microphone, donned a bulky pair of Sony headphones, and waited for the cue. Then I was connected to my new cohost, Newport Beach, Calif., lawyer J. Craig Williams, and recording the first episode of our new podcast. Little did I imagine we’d still be doing it all these years later, making it the longest continually running podcast in law and one of the longest running of any kind. Last night, after 586 episodes (by my count) of that podcast,…

What does it mean to practice data-driven law? On this episode of LawNext, I speak with Jeff Pfeifer, the LexisNexis vice president charged with driving overall product strategy for LexisNexis Legal and Professional, North America. Over the past several years, Pfeifer has spearheaded a series of acquisitions and product developments, all…

It was around the world in 40 days — the legal tech world that is. Earlier this year, Dera Nevin traveled to 19 destinations in 15 countries on six continents over 40 days, meeting with legal hackers and legal entrepreneurs all over the world. The trip, in conjunction with the Global Legal Hackathon, taught her…

Two years ago, James Sandman, president of the Legal Services Corporation, urged that one way to accelerate technology adoption in the legal industry would be to assess and rank law firms based on their use of technology. Last year, Daniel W. Linna Jr., then director of L LegalRND: The Center for Legal Services…

Earlier this week, as I reported here, the online legal services company LegalZoom announced a $500 million secondary investment, the largest investment ever in a legal technology company. It comes as the company continues to expand both its services and its geographic reach. With a valuation of $2 billion and a customer base of 4 million, what will this investment mean for LegalZoom now and into the future?