Version Up

Not being able to make apples-to-apples comparisons of AI tools is a major barrier to effective procurement and deployment of AI in legal. But it's also a problem for vendors who struggle to make better-performing products stand out from better-funded ones.  Anna Guo and Elgar Weijtmans, seek to solve this problem with Legal Benchmarks.
Anna and Elgar joined forces after independently discovering the same problem: legal teams are choosing AI tools on vibes, marketing, and who they know, not on evidence. Their research found that purpose-built legal AI tools were not reliably outperforming general-purpose models. So they developed the Legal AI Evaluation Framework, a community-sourced assessment of AI legal tools that gives buyers a structured, defensible procurement process.
Their message is two-fold. For legal enterprises and users, it's more obvious: being able to compare which AI tool is more accurate, safer, quicker will help them make better decision about which tool to buy (or whether to buy one at all). But as compelling is their value proposition for the vendors who sell these tools: improving transparency in the market allows the best products to rise to the top. 
It's a great collaboration that, like many I've encountered in legal tech, links up diverse capabilities, personalities, and geographies to try to solve an acute legal world problem with a technology-driven solution. I was excited to have them on the pod and look forward to seeing what their framework has in store for the legal industry.
https://www.legalbenchmarks.ai/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-guo-255ba7b0/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/weijtmans/ 
 
 

As a fellow in-house lawyer, I’m impressed and even a bit jealous of how quickly Amy Posner is able to innovate to supercharge her work at a large technology company. Amy comes on the show to drop some knowledge for in-house legal teams looking to benchmark their efforts and law firms wanting to understand their clients’ expectations.
Lots of great takeaways for lawyers who want to know how in-house legal departments at the cutting edge are thinking about the role of innovation and technology in the practice of law.
Amy Posner | LinkedIn

The iPhone didn’t just improve mobile phone, it reshaped entire industries around it. That’s the opportunity law firms have with AI, according to Scott Kveton, CEO and co-founder of CaseMark. 
From Y2K to GenAI, Scott has been a witness to a lot of change in tech. With that experience, he brings to the conversation some powerful insights on how AI forces law firms to rethink how work is produced, who produces it, and how value is captured.
These lessons informed his founding of Casemark, which provides enterprises a secure environment for developing their own applications using AI. The goal is to empower legal to untap the potential of internallly built solutions to the everyday needs of practitioners. This frees law firms from dependencies on third party vendors and false starts that end with zombie software lurking across an enterprise.
Going back to the iPhone analogy, this is the app store moment for legal, and Scott is positioning his services at the center of a movement for enterprises to build point solutions.
CaseMark - AI for Legal Teams | Professional Class AI
case.dev | API Platform for Legal Tech Developers
Scott Kveton | LinkedIn
 

What is a "legal quant"? According to Jamie Tso, who coined the term, it describes a new breed of elite legal practitioners operating at the frontier of tech who will be the rainmakers of the AI era. 
Jamie, who is a practicing lawyer, is not a software engineer. But he does identify as a "legal quant". It's a term he coined to describe a small but growing group of lawyers who use the latest in AI to build small and usable -- and sometimes disposable -- solutions to everyday problems they encounter in their practice. 
But this isn't a hobby. Jamie believes legal quants will transform what it means to be an elite practitioner by leveraging AI to design their own weapons for achieving the best outcome for clients. So he's created a community of like-minded practitioners to meet, exchange ideas, problem solve, and ... most importantly... build things. 
The driver for this is curiosity and growth. But it's also market realities. AI sets a new baseline. Lawyers who generate work product that is no better than AI-generated output will lag behind. Lawyers who use AI to make better, quicker decisions for their clients will race ahead of those who do not. Organizations who build out the internal capacity and structures needed to translate lawyer ideas and needs into tailored tech solutions will take business from those who do not. Legal quants and other lawyers who are AI-fluent will be the fulcrums for this transformation, and they'll gain professionally (and be rewarded financially) for it.
It's a fascinating vision of the future of AI in the practice and business of law. I had a great time talking to Jamie about this moment, and his movement, in AI.
Lawyers, students, and professionals alike can learn a lot from how he views the intersection of technology and knowledge work, and what he thinks it will take to reach the top echelons of the legal industry in the AI era. 
 
Jamie Tso | LinkedIn
LegalQuants

As the technical co-founder of Version Story, Jordan Bryan draws from his experience as a developer seeing how technology solved a major industry pain point: collaborating on coding projects (the solution there was GitHub). He and his co-founder found an analog to a pain point that every lawyer knows well: version control over documents and contracts. This was the genesis for the idea to develop the "git" for lawyers. 
Jordan's journey provides some great lessons for both founders and lawyers. 
Lesson for founders? Good solutions come from the marriage of technical prowess and deep domain expertise.
Lesson for lawyers? Start using AI in your practice, as often as your workflow suits. It's not just about keeping up, it's about leveling up. Embrace the superpower potential of AI. 
It was a fascinating conversation about AI's impact on coding, product development, and legal practice.
**views express my own**
Jordan Bryan | LinkedIn
Version Story: Legal Redlining and Version Control
 
 

The good news for law firms? Most already have the building blocks needed to innovate on their operating model for the AI era. Rok Popov Ledinski explains why. Rok is a developer turned strategic thinker and tech implementor for law firms. So I put on my BigLaw hat and ask him to walk me through the steps of planning, deploying, and driving adoption of technology in a business of law. 
Quick bottom-line? Taking incremental steps towards incremental gains by leveraging existing capabilities and empowering experimentation anchored in the law firm's strategic positioning.
For those with a slightly longer attention span, check out the episode!
 
Rok Popov Ledinski | LinkedIn
https://www.mpladvisors.com/ 
 

I confess I didn't fully "get it" about Claude Code-Cowork-Skills-Plugins until legal engineer Antoine Louis explained it on this episode. It is a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand why it all means that we are crossing the Rubicon in AI for lawyers.
An engineer by trade and a researcher by training, Antoine provides just the right level of detail needed to understand why the last few months have seen a transformational shift in the use of AI in legal (and other verticals). As a start-up founder, he also understands what it means for lawyers, technologists, and anyone working in the business of law. 
The interview is, IMHO, the clearest explanation I've heard of where we are and where we are headed when it comes to using AI to develop tailored tools that support lawyers in their day-to-day practice. Developments in the tech have already taken our industry into uncharted waters. We are at the start of an era during which AI will be used to quickly develop and deploy customizable, personalized legal solutions that address the specific needs of lawyers in their day-to-day practice.
 
Antoine Louis | LinkedIn
Lawvable Skills | AI Agent Skills for Legal Experts | Lawvable

Joined by Kevin Keller. Kevin has done it all -- from product counsel to General Counsel, developer to inventor, from advisor to investor. And he's done it through the formative years of the internet era. The secret to his success? I doubt it can be summed up in one sentence, but one thing that stood out to me is how Kevin has continually invested in himself by developing the skills that position him to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. In today's era of rapid tech transformation, I think both aspiring and practicing lawyers can learn something valuable from Kevin's journey.
Kevin Keller | LinkedIn

I talk to Matt Pollins, a former BigLaw partner turned LegalTech founder. Matt spent many years practicing tech law before transitioning to building LegalTech products. Matt and I talk lawyer-to-lawyer about the practical implications of agentic AI on the practice and business of law. We also explore what it means in the market for legal software when lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments start to build more of their solutions internally.Matt Pollins | Lupl | vibecode.law

What does innovation at a law firm look like? How do you match client/lawyer needs to the internal resources that can address them? I explore this with Benjamin Llinas, Matter Optimization Manager at Linklaters, a global law firm.
Ben is that unicorn in the law firm org structure sitting at the intersection of supporting lawyers, servicing clients, and deploying technology. His work is part art, part science. Part technologist, part psychologist. 
His work requires not only technical acumen, creative thinking and problem solving, but also the emotional intelligence to connect with lawyers to ensure they are using and benefitting from the tech being deployed.
Ben and I talk about how AI is impacting the business of law firms, the day-to-day work of its lawyers, and the demands of its clients. But Ben reminds me that AI is just one out of the many ways that technology can streamline legal practice. If you know how to look for it, you will find a lot in the existing arsenal for streamlining legal operations at a law firm. 
The bigger challenge, in some ways, is identifying the specific needs of a lawyer/project/client.  And so much of our conversation is about the process of un-packing a workflow and finding the right bits and pieces that can be automated -- whether it's using the latest snazzy AI-powered solution or an Excel macro. 
Because what you don't want to do is jump to a conclusion and buy an expensive end-to-end, out-of-the-box solution that does too much and too little all at once. You will have served your internal client better by putting in the effort up-front to parse the workflow, break it down into its distinct parts, and come up with the right plug-and-play mix mix of buy/build solutions that achieve the best outcome overall.