256 episodes

LawNext is a weekly podcast hosted by Bob Ambrogi, who is internationally known for his writing and speaking on legal technology and innovation. Each week, Bob interviews the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what’s next in the legal industry. From legal technology startups to new law firm business models to enhancing access to justice, Bob and his guests explore the future of law and legal practice.

LawNext Populus Radio, Robert Ambrogi

    • News
    • 4.9 • 32 Ratings

LawNext is a weekly podcast hosted by Bob Ambrogi, who is internationally known for his writing and speaking on legal technology and innovation. Each week, Bob interviews the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what’s next in the legal industry. From legal technology startups to new law firm business models to enhancing access to justice, Bob and his guests explore the future of law and legal practice.

    The Inside Story of the Caselaw Access Project, with Three of the People Who Made It Happen

    The Inside Story of the Caselaw Access Project, with Three of the People Who Made It Happen

    March 1 marked the culmination of an ambitious and audacious project to digitize and provide free and open access to all official court decisions ever published in the United States. Called the Caselaw Access Project, it came about, starting in 2015, through an unusual partnership between Harvard Law School and a Silicon Valley-based legal research startup called Ravel Law. 
    The massive undertaking involved scanning nearly 40 million pages from some 40,000 law books and converting it all into machine-readable text files, creating a collection that included 6.4 million published cases, some dating as far back as 1658. While Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab did all the work, Ravel — and later LexisNexis after it acquired Ravel in 2017  — footed the bill. 
     Harvard completed that digitization in 2018, making those cases available for free to the general public, but until March 1, 2024, any commercial use of the cases was restricted by the agreement between Harvard and Ravel (and later LexisNexis). The March 1 milestone marked the full release of the cases, free of any restrictions. 
    On today’s LawNext, we will get the inside story of the history of the Caselaw Access Project and talk about the significance of this final lifting of all restrictions on the data. How did the partnership ever come about in the first place? What was the scanning process like? What does this data mean for the future of access to law, particularly in the face of generative AI? 
    To do all of that, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by three guests who played instrumental roles in the project:
    Daniel Lewis, the cofounder and CEO of Ravel Law, who is now CEO of the contract review company LegalOn. 
    Adam Ziegler, the former director of Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab and the Caselaw Access Project (who recently wrote a first-person account of the project)..
    Jack Cushman, the current director of the Library Innovation Lab. 
    Nik Reed, the cofounder and COO of Ravel Law, and now senior vice president of product, R&D and design at Knowable, was also scheduled to be on the show, but had to cancel as of the recording time. 



    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.
     

    • 50 min
    InfoTrack’s Mission to Revolutionize Litigation Services Such as E-filing and Process Serving, with CEO Ed Watts

    InfoTrack’s Mission to Revolutionize Litigation Services Such as E-filing and Process Serving, with CEO Ed Watts

    InfoTrack may be one of the fastest growing yet least known legal technology companies in the United States. You may know it more through its brands, including ServeNow for finding process servers, One Legal for California court filing, LawToolBox for court calendaring, and the Legal Talk Network group of legal podcasts. 
    Our guest today, Ed Watts, CEO of InfoTrack in the U.S., says the company is on a mission to innovate and even revolutionize litigation services and the litigation workflow. Already, its products are used every day by lawyers throughout the United States to file court cases, track court dockets, search court records, and arrange service of process, and it integrates with most major law practice management platforms.
    InfoTrack in the U.S. actually grew out of a company founded in Australia in 2012, when it was spun out of the LEAP law practice management platform. InfoTrack expanded first to the U.K. and then in 2016 to the U.S. 
    Since coming to this country, it has expanded both organically and through acquisitions, including in 2020, when it acquired two legal tech companies, LawToolBox, the court calendaring company, and One Legal, a California provider of litigation support services such as court filing, service of process, and document retrieval, and in 2021, when it acquired Lawgical, the parent company of ServeNow, Serve Manager, and the Legal Talk Network. 
    Watts has been with the company since before it spun out from LEAP, and says he was employee number one when it expanded to the U.S. He and host Bob Ambrogi talk about the company’s history, where it is today, and its plans for future growth. 
     
    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.
    Sharefile for Legal: Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience
     
    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
     

    • 46 min
    Ep 240: The New Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirement and How Legal Tech Can Help Companies Comply

    Ep 240: The New Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirement and How Legal Tech Can Help Companies Comply

    The arrival of 2024 brought a new reporting requirement for more than 32 million smaller companies in the United States. The new requirement, which came about as part of the federal Corporate Transparency Act of 2021, means that many companies will now have to report information about their beneficial owners — the individuals who ultimately control the company.
    With new requirements for companies to collect, document and submit previously unreported information – and with many companies confused about what the law means for them -- legal tech companies are stepping up to help, with new products specifically designed to facilitate understanding and compliance. 
    One company that is taking the lead on this is Wolters Kluwer. It has launched a beneficial ownership platform for legal, compliance and accounting professionals, and enhanced its Legisway platform for corporate legal departments with new beneficial ownership functionality. 
    On today’s episode, we’ll dig into this new law and its requirements, and hear about how technology is helping companies comply. To do that, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by three executives from Wolters Kluwer:
    Ross Aronowitz, vice president, law firm segment leader, at CT Corporation.
    Ken Crutchfield, vice president and general manager of legal markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US.
    Cathy Rowe, senior vice president and segment leader, U.S. professional market tax and accounting North America. 
    One further note: Last week, after we recorded this conversation, a federal court in Alabama ruled that the Corporate Transparency Act is unconstitutional. The ruling is limited to the two plaintiffs who filed the suit, and the federal government said it will file an appeal. Meanwhile, it is expected that the government will continue to enforce these new beneficial ownership rules. 
      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.
    Sharefile for Legal: Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience
     
    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
     

    • 45 min
    Oddr CEO Milan Bobde On How AI Can Help Law Firms Stem Revenue Leakage and Turn Invoices into Cash

    Oddr CEO Milan Bobde On How AI Can Help Law Firms Stem Revenue Leakage and Turn Invoices into Cash

    Can AI help law firms stem revenue leakage and more efficiently turn their invoices into collected cash? That is the premise behind Oddr, a legal tech startup that recently launched what it says is the legal industry’s first AI-powered invoice to cash platform, centralizing law firm billing, collections, payments and reconciliation in a single product.
    At the Legalweek conference in New York in January, where the platform was officially launched, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Milan Bobde, Oddr’s cofounder and CEO, to record this conversation about the company and how it can help law firms streamline billing and improve collections.
    Before starting Oddr, Bobde was senior director of product management at the enterprise software company Intapp and earlier worked at Thomson Reuters Elite as manager of a diverse portfolio of products.
     
    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.
    Noodle: automate all of your practice's admin work, while you focus on growing your business without increasing headcount.
    Sharefile for Legal: Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience
     
    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
     

    • 21 min
    Thomson Reuters’ AI Strategy for Legal, with Mike Dahn, Head of Westlaw, and Joel Hron, Head of AI

    Thomson Reuters’ AI Strategy for Legal, with Mike Dahn, Head of Westlaw, and Joel Hron, Head of AI

    On this episode of LawNext: A conversation about Thomson Reuters’ strategy around generative artificial intelligence with two of the executives most directly responsible for its development and implementation. 
    In a year dominated by discussion of generative AI and its potential impact on the legal profession, Thomson Reuters has played a leading role. It started in June, when the company announced its $650 million acquisition of the legal research and AI company Casetext and the CoCounsel generative AI tool Casetext had developed in collaboration with OpenAI.  
    Then, in November, Thomson Reuters made good on its promise to integrate generative AI within its flagship legal research platform, introducing AI Assisted Research in Westlaw Precision. Soon after that, it rolled out generative AI within Practical Law, its legal know-how product.
    What does this all mean for legal research and legal software, now and into the future? Today we go deep into TR’s AI development with two of the company’s leaders in this area: 
    Mike Dahn, senior vice president and head of Westlaw product management. 
    Joel Hron, head of artificial intelligence and TR Labs.
    We talk about the development of AI Assisted Research in Westlaw Precision, the company’s broader AI product strategy, its acquisition of CoCounsel and where that fits in its AI strategy, how the company is protecting against hallucinations and ensuring security, and the future of AI at Thomson Reuters and more broadly. 
     
    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.
    Noodle: automate all of your practice's admin work, while you focus on growing your business without increasing headcount.
    Sharefile for Legal: Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience
     
    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
     

    • 57 min
    Ep 237: How A New Kind of Justice Worker Could Narrow the Justice Gap, with Nikole Nelson, CEO of Frontline Justice

    Ep 237: How A New Kind of Justice Worker Could Narrow the Justice Gap, with Nikole Nelson, CEO of Frontline Justice

    In November, the organization Frontline Justice launched with the mission of addressing the escalating access to justice crisis by empowering a new category of legal helper, the justice worker. The organization has an ambitious mission: To clear the way for justice workers to exist in all 50 states by 2035. 
    In pursuit of that mission, it is backed by an impressive founding team that includes Rebecca Sandefur, one of the world’s leading scholars on access to justice (who was on LawNext in 2020); Matthew Burnett, senior program officer for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation (ABF); Jim Sandman, president emeritus of the Legal Services Corporation (on LawNext in 2019); and other notable names. 
    On this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Nikole Nelson, the CEO of Frontline Justice. Before starting there in November, Nelson had been executive director of Alaska Legal Services Corporation, where she was instrumental in launching a statewide community justice worker project that won the 2019 World Justice Challenge. She was also instrumental in bringing about an Alaska Supreme Court rule change in 2022 allowing justice workers supervised by Alaska Legal Services to provide limited scope legal help in certain situations. 
    Nelson describes how justice workers helped Alaska Legal Services better serve the legal problems of people across the state’s remotest regions, and how new models of justice workers in other states could similarly help reach those who are not now receiving adequate help for their legal problems. She also recognizes that Frontline Justice faces obstacles in achieving its mission, and she shares her thoughts on how it can overcome them. 
    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.
     

    • 46 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
32 Ratings

32 Ratings

Code: RO1932 Free ride ,

A great law firm doesn't require great sacrifice

The October 2023 interview with Kimberly Bennett was enlightening, addressing the critical issue of work-life balance for lawyers. It's refreshing to hear a conversation about building a law firm that genuinely serves the individual's needs!

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A must-listen for a new perspective on how to practice the law

The legal profession is rapidly changing, and the host makes the changes easy to understand and easier to implement. He also makes topics that lawyers usually consider dry interesting. SO thank you for that.

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A Must-Listen for Lawyers and Law Firms

This podcast is excellent for lawyers and law firms who are looking to build their practice with the integration of tech. If you’re looking to grow your firm, subscribe and learn from a great host and different industry leaders.

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