This week on The Geek in Review, we sit down with Mark Doble, Co-Founder and CEO of Alexi, to discuss the state of AI-driven tools in the legal industry and how they are evolving to meet the needs of modern litigation practices. The conversation begins with a timely debate on measuring productivity in remote work settings. Doble, coming from a background in both law and software engineering, draws intriguing parallels between how legal services and software development measure output and efficiency.

Moving on to Alexi’s core offering, Doble delves into how the platform is currently being used by litigators. He explains that Alexi’s AI technology not only handles the tedious work of research and memo drafting but also provides opportunities for lawyers to explore creative, strategic approaches to cases. By automating routine tasks, Alexi empowers attorneys to focus on high-level legal reasoning and client goals, rather than sifting through mountains of documents.

A key aspect of the discussion centers on the ways in which AI tools, like Alexi, can transform junior associate work. Instead of solely performing rote research or document review, younger lawyers can now leverage these tools as teaching aids, accelerating their path to deeper legal understanding. Doble emphasizes that as automation becomes more sophisticated, the human lawyer’s role in guiding strategy and exercising judgment grows ever more critical.

Doble then addresses concerns around data security and confidentiality. He reiterates that while the underlying technology is evolving, core principles of security remain the same—encrypting data, controlling access, and ensuring that information is never inadvertently trained into the model’s outputs. He acknowledges emerging questions around work product and privilege but sees them as part of the natural adaptation cycle in adopting new technology.

Finally, looking ahead, Doble hints at a significant upcoming announcement from Alexi early next year. He suggests that this new release will push beyond current capabilities, bridging the gap between mere information retrieval and genuine “legal reasoning” support. While keeping details under wraps, Doble leaves listeners with a vision of AI as a true partner in litigation, promising exponential improvements that will redefine how attorneys practice law.

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert
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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

TRANSCRIPT

Continue Reading Harnessing AI for Litigation: Mark Doble on Alexi’s Next Evolution

On this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert delve into how AI can transform legal writing with ClearBrief founder and CEO Jacqueline Schafer. As a former litigator, Schafer experienced firsthand the frustrating scramble to finalize briefs and prepare filings. She founded ClearBrief in 2020 to leverage AI to analyze documents and suggest relevant evidence and citations to streamline drafting.

ClearBrief integrates into Microsoft Word to align with lawyers’ existing workflows. By uploading case documents and discovery materials, the AI can pull facts and quotes directly from the record to support legal arguments in the brief. New features even generate chronologies and timelines from case files automatically. Schafer explains the AI doesn’t hallucinate text from scratch, avoiding ethical pitfalls. Rigorous security and confidentiality controls provide the trust needed to gain adoption at top law firms.

According to Schafer, attorneys now exhibit much greater openness to tailored AI tools that enhance productivity versus disrupting their workflows entirely. Younger associates and paralegals tend to be most enthusiastic about the technology while firm leadership lags. She believes empowering the next generation of legal professionals with AI will modernize law practice to better serve unmet needs.

Looking ahead, Schafer expects to expand ClearBrief’s features to assist paralegals along with corporate attorneys beyond litigation. By leveraging AI to handle tedious tasks like cite-checking, lawyers can focus their time on high-value analysis and strategy. With the aid of trusted AI writing assistants, attorneys can craft compelling briefs and filings more efficiently while still verifying the underlying sources.

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:Continue Reading Jacqueline Schafer on Writing Briefs at the Speed of AI: How ClearBrief is Transforming Legal Drafting

On this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert interview Thomas Suh, Founder and CEO, and Ken Block, Senior Account Executive of LegalMation. The company provides AI-powered tools to help litigators automate repetitive tasks and work more efficiently. The conversation focuses on LegalMation’s products, overcoming resistance to adopting new legal tech, and predictions for the future evolution of legal service delivery.

Suh provides background on founding LegalMation about seven years ago to help streamline the “scut work” litigation associates spend time on. The flagship product automates drafting responses to lawsuits, discovery requests, demand letters, and more by leveraging a firm’s historical data. LegalMation initially built an automation tool internally at a law firm before deciding to spin it off into a standalone legal tech company. The product found an early champion in the form of a corporate legal department interested in licensing it. Today, LegalMation serves large corporate legal departments, law firms, and insurance companies.

Suh and Block discuss common roadblocks to adopting new legal technology like lack of trust and skepticism. Suh notes the importance of identifying the right use cases where efficiency gains matter most. For high-stakes litigation, efficiency may be less of a concern than for high-volume routine matters. Corporate legal departments are often early adopters because they are focused on efficiency and supplementing personnel. Law firms still incentivized by billable hours may be warier of efficiency gains.

For the YouTube Viewers, Block demonstrates LegalMation’s Response Creator tool for automating drafting of responses to complaints and discovery requests. The AI leverages a firm’s historical data to maintain proper tone and style while speeding up document preparation significantly. Lawyers can still review and edit the AI-generated drafts before finalizing. Suh explains that because the AI relies solely on a firm’s data, it maintains consistency rather than attempting to generate random creative language.

Looking ahead, Suh predicts that the litigation process will become more modular, with different firms or providers specializing in discrete phases rather than handling a case end-to-end. Block emphasizes that younger lawyers expect to leverage more technology and are unwilling to slog through repetitive manual tasks, which will force law firms to adapt. Technology stacks and automation will become selling points for recruiting top young talent.

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading Thomas Suh and Ken Block on How LegalMation is Revolutionizing Litigation Efficiency (TGIR Ep. 222)

In this riveting episode of our podcast, we delve into the fascinating world of AI in the legal industry with our esteemed guests, Nathan Walter and Bridget Albiero. Walter, a former attorney and founder of BriefPoint.ai, has leveraged his legal expertise and passion for technology to automate the manual processes that often bog down law firms. Bridget Albiero, a User Experience (UX) and User Design (UD) expert, underscores the significance of intuitive design in making these AI tools not just effective, but user-friendly.

Nathan Walter has been instrumental in creating BriefPoint.ai, a tool designed specifically for lawyers to eliminate the mundane and time-consuming aspects of law practice. With the goals of automating the litigation process from response to appeal, Walter and Albeiro are focused on removing the mundane tasks, such as typing, from the process and allowing the attorneys to focus more on their legal experience and expertise over the grunt work that takes up too much of their time already.

However, the success of such tools is not solely dependent on their technical capabilities. Bridget Albiero’s role in UX and UD ensures that these AI systems are designed with the end user in mind. With the mission to make legal professionals’ lives much easier. Bridget’s work is critical in crafting an interface that enables lawyers to accomplish more work in less time, truly maximizing the benefits of AI integration.

Nathan and Bridget’s collaboration epitomizes the intersection of law and technology. They argue that the advent of AI tools, such as BriefPoint.ai, will invariably put pressure on law firms to rethink their traditional billing models. Nathan anticipates a shift towards contingency fee-based and flat fee billings, spurred on by the increased efficiency AI brings to the table. In addition, the ability for the plaintiff’s lawyers to reduce the overall amount of work that they need to put into each case, there will be more incentives to take on work that they might otherwise not consider. This has a multitude of effects ranging from flooding courts with more and more cases, to overwhelming defense firms and corporations with a much higher litigation matters, to making working at plaintiff’s firms more attractive to associates who don’t want to work the number of hours they would need to do in BigLaw firms.

Bridget also emphasizes the importance of approaching AI with a balanced perspective. While there are a number of positives when it comes to AI in the legal process, there are also downsides that need to be considered as well. Bridget and Nathan run through some of those issues as well. This thoughtful conversation with Nathan and Bridget offers a unique insight into the future of the legal industry, where AI and human ingenuity work hand in hand. Listen in to learn more about how these changes might soon be reshaping the legal landscape.

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Twitter: ⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠
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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading Lawyer vs. AI or Lawyers + AI: Embracing the Future of Legal Practice with BriefPoint.ai’s Nathan Walter and Bridget Albiero (TGIR Ep. 202)

On the latest episode of The Geek In Review:

Laurent Wiesel, Founder and CEO of Justly, talks with us about leaving his BigLaw partnership to create a startup focused on litigation analytics. Wiesel discusses how he saw that there was a growing gap between what clients were asking on issues of pricing and process, and what law firms were able to deliver. Greg (@glambert) talks about his ability to post an actual written blog post this week about who is the customer.

Legal Startup CEO, Laurent Wiesel

Continue Reading Podcast Ep. 13 – Litigation Analytics with Laurent Wiesel of Justly

Image [cc] Flood

This three part series will examine the emerging trend for third party litigation funding. In this first segment, we describe what it is and why clients will find it interesting.

What is it?
Settlements from law suits are assets. There – I said it. And once something is recognized as an asset

Yet another 2011 ILTA Conference chance meeting lead to an interesting Q&A with Jim McGann VP of Information Discovery at Index Engines. In my prior role at Fulbright, I worked with the e-discovery practice group on developing ideas for building client relationships. As part of this we offered a “Litigation Readiness Audit” to help

Martindale-Hubbell released an interesting report this morning called “The Profitable Legal Department: How legal departments can prosper by generating revenue for their company.” The report follows the legal departments of DuPont, Tyco and Standard Life and reports on the success of each of their “recovery programs” that take a more aggressive stance to assert the