On today’s LawNext: we hand over the podcast to NotebookLM to discuss the state of law practice management technology. 

If you haven’t heard of NotebookLM, it is a generative AI tool from Google that turns your documents into engaging audio discussions. Its output sounds a whole lot like, well, a podcast, with two hosts chatting it up about your documents. 

To quote Google’s own description, “With one click, two AI hosts start up a lively “deep dive” discussion based on your sources. They summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth.”

So we decided to give it a try.

Back in September, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi wrote a four-part series on his LawSites blog called, “The Shrinking Ownership of Law Practice Management Technology.” It was a deep dive into how ownership of law practice management software for solo and small law firms has been consolidated under just six major ownership groups. 

We loaded the four parts of that series into NotebookLM and asked it to generate its audio overview. What you’ll hear today is the discussion it generated, followed by Bob’s thoughts on what it produced. The NotebookLM audio is about 15 minutes long, and Bob’s comments will come after that plays. 

It is important to keep in mind that the audio generated by NotebookLM is not simply a summary. The two speakers do summarize key points from Bob’s articles, but they also add interpretations and perspectives that are nowhere to be found in the original source material. 

Here are the articles on which the audio is based:

• The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 1 of 4): A Market Dominated by Just Six Ownership Groups. 

• The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 2 of 4): A Scorecard of Who Owns What.

• The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 3 of 4): Future Development and Market Opportunities.

• The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 4 of 4): Wrapping It All Up.

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.

• Littler, local everywhere. 

• Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach

• ShareFile, 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.

You cannot have innovation without adoption. That was a theme I heard repeatedly when I attended the Knowledge Management & Innovation for Legal conference in New York City in October. Our guest today, Paul Henry, would take that a step further and say you do not really have adoption without engagement. 

Henry is the founder and CEO of NGAGE Intelligence, a platform that provides law firms with highly granular and comprehensive behavioral analytics to help them understand whether, how and by whom their communication, collaboration and AI tools are being used.  

NGAGE was founded on the notion of employee engagement and how analytics can be used to measure and improve it. At the conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Henry to learn more about Ngage and how the analytics it provides can drive adoption, engagement and governance. 

A note that this was recorded live at the conference, as the morning keynote speech was being piped throughout the conference area, so I apologize for the background noise.

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.

• Littler, local everywhere. 

• Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach

• ShareFile, 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.

Everlaw for Good is a program run by the e-discovery company Everlaw, through which it makes its software available at no cost to legal aid organizations, nonprofit organizations, and investigative journalists. 

One beneficiary of that program is the Center for Justice and Accountability, a human rights nonprofit that works to seek justice on behalf of victims of atrocity crimes, including torture, genocide, and war crimes. At the recent Everlaw Summit, the CJA’s work using the Everlaw platform was honored with the Everlaw for Good award. 

LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the summit, which was held in San Francisco in October, and he had the opportunity to sit down to record this conversation with two of the CJA’s lawyers, along with the director of the Everlaw for Good program. Today’s guests are:

• Claret Vargas, senior staff attorney at CJA. 

• Daniel McLaughlin, senior staff attorney at CJA.

• Joanne Sprague, director of Everlaw for Good. 

They discuss the Everlaw for Good program and the specific impact it has had on CJA’s work. 

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.

• Littler, local everywhere. 

• Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach

• ShareFile, 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.

In the field of legal knowledge management and innovation, Sally Gonzalez is both a legend and a trailblazer. Over the course of her 40-year career, she has worked for some of the world's largest law firms to develop and lead KM and strategic technology initiatives. She has overseen KM and information technology programs at such global firms as Norton Rose Fulbright, Dentons, Akin Gump, Covington & Burling, and Jones Day, and been a strategic consultant at major consulting firms including HBR, Navigant, PwC and, most recently, Fireman & Company, 

Gonzalez surprised some of those who attended the Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference held in New York City in October, where she was the keynote speaker, when she announced her retirement there and was recognized by her peers for her decades of contributions to the legal industry. That made her keynote, in which she spoke about core principles for successful KM, her swan song, of sorts. 

Following her keynote, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi, who was at the conference, sat down with Gonzalez to record this conversation about her thoughts on KM, innovation, AI, culture, change management, and much more. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

• Littler, local everywhere. 

• Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach

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

Recently, the Everlaw Summit, the annual customer conference of the e-discovery company Everlaw, convened in San Francisco. In his keynote address there, cofounder and CEO AJ Shankar announced the general availability, after a year of beta testing, of a suite of generative AI features for reviewing, coding and analyzing documents in discovery and litigation prep. 

LawNext host Bob AmbrogiI was at the conference, and the next morning, he sat down with Shankar for this conversation about Everlaw’s development of these AI tools and Shankar’s views on how gen AI will impact legal professionals. As you’ll hear him say, he makes no bones about calling it a game changer. 

With a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, Shankar founded Everlaw in 2011 as one of the earliest cloud-based e-discovery platforms. He has been on this podcast twice before:

• In April 2019, where he discussed the company’s founding and early development.

• In November 2021, just after Everlaw became one of the first legal tech companies to achieve unicorn status, or a valuation of over $1 billion. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

• Littler, local everywhere. 

• Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach

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

At the Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference held recently in New York City, Legal Services NYC was named as the inaugural winner of the LexPrize award, which is designed to recognize groundbreaking ideas in knowledge management and innovation for the legal industry. It won for its development of the Legal Services NYC KM Portal, a custom-built knowledge management portal designed to enable its legal professionals to more easily access important resources and more effectively collaborate with each other. 

LSNYC, whose 12 offices and more than 500 attorneys serve nearly 110,000 clients annually, developed the portal in partnership with Sente Advisors, a company that helps law firms and legal organizations develop innovative projects. Designed to be a home for user-submitted and curated knowledge that is easily searchable, LSNYC describes the portal as one part social network, one part intranet, and one part enterprise search. 

LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the KM&I for Legal conference and had the opportunity to sit down there with two of the people who were instrumental in the portal’s design and development: 

• Alexander Horwitz, chief operating officer at Legal Services NYC. 

• Kate Boyd, chief operating officer at Sente Advisors. 

In today’s episode, Horwitz and Boyd share the story of the problem they set out to solve, the constraints they had to work within, and how they went about doing it. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

• Littler, local everywhere. 

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

Recently, the law practice management company Clio launched Clio Duo, its generative AI legal assistant. On today’s LawNext, Jonathan Watson, Clio’s chief technology officer, joins the show to discuss Duo’s development, capabilities and future direction.He also talks about some of the other products Clio recently launched, including native accounting and custom reporting. 

Watson and LawNext host Bob Ambrogi recorded this conversation live at the Clio Cloud Conference in Austin, Texas, in October. Watson has twice previously been on this podcast, on Nov. 14, 2023, and on Nov. 3, 2022. He has been with Clio since 2017, and has been its CTO since 2021. He was previously director of engineering at Shopify. 

Note that this is the fifth and final episode we are posting that we recorded live at the Clio Cloud Conference. Check out the other four episodes: 

• Live from #ClioCon: Clio CEO Jack Newton on Generative AI and the New Duo AI Legal Assistant.

• Live from #ClioCon: A Clio Power Trio, with COO Ronnie Gurion, CFO Curt Sigfstead, and Board Member Mark Britton.

• Recorded Live At #ClioCon: A Deep Dive into the 2024 Clio Legal Trends Report, with Joshua Lenon, Clio’s Lawyer in Residence. 

• LawNext Podcast: The LegalTech Fund’s Zach Posner on Investing in Legal Tech (and His Upcoming Summit). 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

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

When Zach Posner was last on this podcast, it was 2021 and he was less than a year into having cofounded The LegalTech Fund, the first venture capital firm to be laser-focused on law and legal technology. Since then, his firm, of which he is managing director, has gone on to build up a portfolio of more than 60 legal tech companies in which it invests. 

His firm has also launched his own conference, the TLTF Summit, which will convene for the third straight year starting Dec. 4 in Key Biscayne, Fla. After attending the first summit, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi wrote in his review, “It was a superlative conference – one like no other conference in legal tech.”

We’ve been wanting to get Zach back on this podcast for an update, and as it happens, he was in attendance at the recent Clio Cloud Conference, where we were set up with my mics and recording equipment. So Zach and Bob sat down for this impromptu conversation about his firm, his conference, and his thoughts on the legal tech landscape. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

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

At the recent Clio Cloud Conference in Austin, Texas, Clio released its ninth annual Legal Trends Report, a report that uses both survey responses and anonymized data from Clio users to paint a picture of key trends in law practice and legal technology.

This year’s report has some intriguing findings on lawyers’ adoption of AI and the types of tasks within a law office that could be automated using AI.The survey also looks at trends in hourly and flat fee billing, and includes the results of a “secret shopper” study of lawyers’ responses (or, more accurately, non-responses) to inquiries from potential clients.

To discuss all of this and more, Joshua Lenon, Clio’s lawyer in residence and one of the principal authors of the report, sat down live with LawNext host Bob Ambrogi during the conference. Here is their conversation. 

Note that we have already posted two other LawNExt episodes recorded live at ClioCon, one with Clio’s founder and CEO Jack Newton, and another with what we called the “Clio Power Trio” of Clio’s COO Ronnie Gurion, CFO Curt Sigfstead, and board member and investor Mark Britton. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

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

This has been a significant year for the law practice management company Clio, which in July raised a record-setting $900 million financing round – the largest ever for a legal tech company, and which recently wrapped up its 12th annual Clio Cloud Conference, its largest ever with some 2,600 attendees in person in Austin, Texas, and almost as many attending virtually from all over the globe. 

At the conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down for a live interview with a “Clio power trio” of two of its top executives and a member of its board of directors. They talk about the implications of this raise and its impact on the law practice management landscape. Together for this interview are:

• Ronnie Gurion, chief operating officer and former GM and global head of Uber for Business.

• Curt Sigfstead, chief financial officer, responsible for Clio’s financial affairs, including finance, accounting, capital, treasury, taxation, and corporate development.

• Mark Britton, an investor in Clio and member of its board of directors and investor and formerly the founder, chairman and CEO of Avvo.  

They share their perspectives on the financing and the opportunities it presents. They also discuss why investors are showing greater interest in legal tech, consolidation within the legal tech industry, and the possibility of Clio going public. 

Note that last week’s episode, also recorded live at the conference, featured Jack Newton, Clio’s founder and CEO. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

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

We’ve just returned from the Clio Cloud Conference, held this year in Austin, Texas, where, in what has become an annual tradition, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Clio founder and CEO Jack Newton for a live interview. 

At the conference, Clio launched Clio Duo, the generative AI legal assistant integrated into Clio’s flagship product, Clio Manage. In this interview, Newton discusses what Duo does and why he believes generative AI is a game-changer for lawyers, more significant even than lawyers’ move to the cloud a decade ago, but with parallels to that transition. 

Newton also talks about findings from Clio’s just-released Legal Trends Report on lawyers’ adoption of AI and the concerns about AI that are still holding some lawyers back. In a broad-ranging conversation, Newton also shares his thoughts on the law practice management landscape, Clio’s expansion into the mid-firm market, and the greater integration of fintech applications in legal. 

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.

• Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

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