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What does it take to go from a small town near Cologne, Germany to General Counsel at one of the most interesting AI companies in the Bay Area? Hanna Steinbach, General Counsel at Harness, joins LegalTechLIVE to share a wealth of information about how law differs around the world and what she values in her in-house role. After studying international business in Vienna, a contracts law class set her life’s trajectory towards starting a career in antitrust law. After working at Freshfields, Baker McKenzie, and the World Intellectual Property Organization under the United Nations as a diplomat, Hanna spent a defining 10 years at Medallia for her first in-house job. Her time at the company involved hypergrowth periods, an IPO, going private, and many different CEO changes. This experience shaped how she runs her legal department today at Harness. Hanna shares her thoughts on why she thinks engineering guardrails matter more than legal ones when agents start acting autonomously and where liability currently lands, how to sell to a GC, and the gaps nobody in legal tech is solving. Get to know Hanna by watching this episode, and tune in to her AILBA panel with Jyoti Bandal (Harness/Traceable/AppDynamics), Nidhi Agarwal (HackerOne), and others on October 28! Find the registration link below. More about Hanna: * Hanna Steinbach on LinkedIn * Harness Website * Harness on LinkedIn * AILBA Panel RSVP Webpage This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

Our industry constantly hears about healthy, steady, emerging, and failing legal tech companies, but few of us understand growth (or lack thereof) in granular detail. That’s where Legalcomplex comes in. Hailing from Suriname and the Netherlands, Raymond Blyd’s database of 31,000 legal tech companies tracks raised funding and employee retention, and the numbers speak volumes (but you’ll have to tune in to learn more). Raymond has tracked legal tech companies since 2015, so he’s coming in with all the receipts. In this 50-minute conversation, Nick and Raymond also cover whether legal tech is in an AI spending bubble, why lawyers can’t quit AI, what Anthropic understands about power that Google can’t, the nitty-gritty of token economics, and the one layer of legal practice no model will ever touch. You’ll also learn about Raymond’s journey taking a Waymo from San Francisco to Apple HQ, excitement for the upcoming Theranos documentary, and nonexistent relationship with horror movies. This conversation will certainly keep you on your toes! Get to know Raymond, hear what keeps him up at night, and listen to his legal tech hot takes in Episode 153! More about Raymond Blyd: * Raymond Blyd on LinkedIn * Legalcomplex Website * Legalcomplex on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

Joining us on LegalTechLIVE is Sona Sulakian, VP of AI Products at Filevine, co-founder of Pincites (now Lois), and, as Nick describes, a “legal-tech heavyweight.” We were all especially excited to bond over our shared Middle Eastern roots and love for legal technology. Here’s some background on this episode. Sona began her career as an M&A and patent litigation attorney at a BigLaw firm. She left her secure job to create an AI contract negotiation startup called Pincites with her sister Maryan, a former Facebook and GitHub engineer (and yes, Mom was HR). The two went through Y Combinator, built a Word add-in for AI-powered redlining and playbooks, grew a loyal customer base, and ultimately got acquired by Filevine, which happened to be one of their best customers. After the acquisition, Sona and Mariam are now both at Filevine, and Pincites was rebranded to Lois, Filevine’s approach to enterprise knowledge, orchestration, and AI agents for legal drafting. Throughout the conversation, we discovered that Sona almost didn’t leave her career, the pros and cons of working with family, what the acquisition felt like, the feedback received from trusted colleagues, and her thoughts on confidently making decisions. Get to know Sona, her founder journey, what Filevine is up to, and the Bay Area trains in Episode 152. More about Sona Sulakian * Sona Sulakian on LinkedIn * Filevine Website * Filevine on LinkedIn * Lois Website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

After 20,000 completed divorces in a decade, Hello Divorce has saved Americans $450 million in legal fees. Adversarial. Expensive. Exhausting. Three words that politely describe our understanding of divorce (unless you’ve been through one yourself, your adjectives might be… well, less polite). Erin Levine, CEO and Founder of Hello Divorce, has spent a decade trying to make divorce less awful, less costly, and less mentally straining for consumers. Since Nick invests in Hello Divorce, get ready for some entrepreneurial insights and witty banter. Erin’s journey to reaching her business goals wasn’t always smooth sailing. Her candidly spoken obstacles include VC rounds that “reset the clock” every time, an early subscription model that consumers found inauthentic, an AI agent that started gaslighting potential clients, and a breast cancer diagnosis that forced her to slow growth and focus on margins. Despite the hurdles, she knew her company’s value and how it legally helped spouses who are seeking a new beginning. Hello Divorce now operates in all 50 states, 3,100+ county courts, and 20,000 completed divorces. Erin developed a subsidiary real estate brokerage that stops divorcing homeowners from making financially catastrophic mistakes. Lastly, because we’re not in the business of spoiling episodes, she pivoted to employee benefits as a distribution channel serving many recognizable employers. Erin’s decisions have left 97% of customers feeling positive about the result of their finalized divorce and earned a 4.5/5 review score. Listen to Erin’s why behind Hello Divorce, her personal testimony battling breast cancer, and how her lessons became the building blocks for a better version of her company in Episode 151! More about Erin Levine: * Erin Levine on LinkedIn * Hello Divorce on LinkedIn * Hello Divorce Website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

Did You Know… 6 million car accidents and 2 million injury claims happen every year. Yet even the busiest expert witnesses can only cover a fraction of a percent of those cases. How does AI fit into automotive expert witness work? Can a single picture of a car dent identify the speed of impact, or whether anyone was actually injured? Musculoskeletal Biomechanics expert witness Dr. Rami Hashish built Silent Witness to solve the problem. Rami’s Doctorate in Physical Therapy and PhD in Musculoskeletal Biomechanics from USC steered him into the expert witness world and led him to a decade of being retained over a thousand times in personal injury and accident cases. Simultaneously, he founded and sold an AI medical records summarization company called Parrot. Throughout his journey, he kept asking himself why expert-level intelligence only arrives at the end of a case. With his new venture, Silent Witness, the platform uses a proprietary mathematical vision model to analyze vehicle damage photos, quantify deformation, and calculate the change in speed, all in a fraction of the time it takes to blink. It models human motion inside the vehicle and predicts expected injuries, factoring in the plaintiff’s height, weight, and pre-existing conditions. The best part? Every case is reviewed and signed off by a PhD-level scientist to ensure the final expert witness report is defensible in court. Silent Witness brings this expert-level intelligence throughout the entire case. Hear about Rami’s experience as an expert witness, how AI should be used in his industry, and detailed explanations about Silent Witness in Episode 150! More about Rami Hashish, PhD, DPT: * Rami Hashish, PhD, DPT on LinkedIn * Silent Witness on LinkedIn * Silent Witness Website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

A highly recommended guest is the star of this episode! Joining Nick and Hana is Josh Lokko, CEO of Statera (That’s S-T-A-T-E-R-A, not to be confused with the US ADHD medication, Strattera. We felt the need to clarify that). ANYWAYS, Statera is an AI-powered legal tech startup catered to the capital markets practice, built by a capital markets lawyer. Since childhood, Josh knew he wanted to be a lawyer. After working at Shearman & Sterling in the capital markets practice, he grew frustrated with the manual “circle up” processes and late-night pricing supplements. Josh compared capital markets lawyers to sculptors, but instead of chiseling the marble, they spend half their day mining for it. Verifying hundreds of facts across prospectuses created unnecessary risk and consumed billable hours. The solution to this problem is Statera. Inspired by his self-built Excel VBA tool, Statera’s platform automates the grueling “circle up” process, cutting due diligence time by 80%! Rather than implementing pure agentic workflows, its self-deterministic AI foundations eliminate hallucination risks. Statera assists junior associates with tedious tasks unique to the capital markets industry, so they can focus on the work that seals the deals. Josh’s insight on the identity shifts leaving BigLaw, his goals for Statera, and his take on the legal tech industry are now available in Episode 149. More about Josh Lokko: * Josh Lokko on LinkedIn * Statera Website * Statera on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

As everyone’s racing to adopt AI tools, how do law firms govern their use before it becomes a risk? This is what Nick uncovers in his interview with Nam Nguyen, COO of truthsystems - a YC-backed company building AI governance infrastructure specifically for law firms. If you don’t know him already, here’s Nam’s story and how truthsystems came to life. After growing up in Vietnam, Nam moved to the United States to study the intersection of linguistics and computer science at UCLA. He then did NLP research, worked in Southeast Asian fintech, and studied at Stanford Law with Dr. Megan Ma, researching supervisory AI agents. Through this research, he discovered an urgent market need: truthsystems. truthsystems is a software startup that flags noncompliant AI use in regulated industries. Nam and co-founder Anh (Alex) Mac decided to target law firms first because governance in legal can’t be a generic solution. Every matter has its own rules from outside counsel, emphasizing the importance of matter-level context. Coming from a tech background with a deep understanding of AI, their goal is to show legal professionals how to leverage AI to be more efficient while mitigating risk. For example, Charter is their browser extension and desktop app that monitors every prompt sent to Harvey, Claude, and Legora. It proactively redirects attorneys before sensitive information lands in the wrong place. Nam opens up about what’s next for truthsystems (a new product perhaps?), how data infrastructure beats model selection, and the cultural differences behind building tech in Episode 148. More about Nam Nguyen: * Nam Nguyen on LinkedIn * truthsystems Website * truthsystems on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

Legal tech companies aren’t just selling products to firms; they’re selling to companies in their own industry. As someone who has implemented four contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems, twice with Ironclad, our next guest has buckets of information to share about in-house teams and what they actually need from tech. In arguably the most meta episode yet, meet Jasmine Singh, General Counsel at Ironclad! Jasmine started her career as a complex commercial litigator for Kirkland & Ellis and realized she wanted to use her “superpowers” of charisma, wit, and people-first instincts every day rather than waiting for the right strategic moment. Courageously leaving without a plan, she became a spin class instructor (which she loved!) and eventually landed roles at 24 Hour Fitness, Pinterest, Patreon, and her first GC position at Binti. As Ironclad’s GC, Jasmine’s is the primary legal advisor for the company and responsible for leading the legal team. For her, finding the right tools is about choosing the right partner, integration planning needs to account for the times things work and break, and AI is a sparring partner that pressure-tests her own work. Lawyers are always in the driver’s seat of what they produce, but embracing tech competently breeds an efficient in-house team, a quality that’s the opposite of a “cost center” stereotype! Jasmine names the problem no one’s solved yet, details what kills deals with vendors fast, shares where she trusts AI in legal work, and reveals the most underrated skill for running an in-house team in this episode. More about Jasmine: * Jasmine Singh on LinkedIn * Ironclad Website * Ironclad on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

When: Sunday, October 25, 2026 Where: Suffolk Law School (Boston, MA) Pricing: $150 - Early Bird Discount / $250 - Standard Tom Martin, CEO of LawDroid, adjunct professor at Suffolk Law, and co-founder of the American Legal Technology Awards, talks to Nick and Hana about the seventh annual awards ceremony happening this October in Boston. Highlighting what makes our small but powerful industry so great, we finally get the origin story of the awards show we all know and love! A nomination for the British Legal Technology Awards in London inspired the American Legal Technology Awards, because the US legal tech community also deserved a spotlight. The collaboration that started with Tom, Patrick Palac, and Cat Moon grew into what many now call “Law Prom.” This black-tie event creates a virtuous cycle of recognizing innovators who do good, real, and purposeful work that inspires others to do the same. Tom shares how nominees are chosen, the judging process, and the moments that make the event unforgettable. And last but not least, Tom thanks sponsors such as Clio, ARAG Legal Insurance, ADM, and Practising Law Institute for their support of the American Legal Technology Awards. For more details, heartfelt memories, and potential category ideas for the future (perhaps an “Up-and-Comer” or “Newbie” award??), tune in to this episode. And buy your ticket while the Early Bird Discount is available! More about the American Legal Technology Awards: * American Legal Technology Website * American Legal Technology Awards LinkedIn More about Tom Martin: * Tom Martin on LinkedIn * Tom Martin on X * LawDroid Manifesto This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

You may know our guest as co-host of Further Comments and accidental (yes, accidental - we’ll get into that later) founder of Syntheia. Horace Wu makes his inaugural appearance on LegalTechLIVE and has plenty of stories that grab your attention. Hana couldn’t be a part of this great conversation, but here’s a snippet of what Nick and Horace covered. After nearly 15 years as an M&A lawyer across Australia and New York, he left law to build an events discovery app, only to fold 6 months later when Facebook and Google launched. Call it fate or divine intervention, an encounter with a German NLP company that had won a contract to review 10,000 leases with no lawyers on the team sparked a conversation about what became Syntheia (pronounced “Cynthia”). Using fixed rules and outputs, Syntheia deterministically extracts and structures transactional legal documents, breaking them into clauses, subclauses, and definitions. It offers multi-document comparison that surfaces differences and risk across a set of documents. Syntheia is a bootstrapped and profitable company, but it’s exploring the idea of being acquired or going through a first funding round. Watch Episode 145 to hear Horace’s founder origin story, how Syntheia helps transactional lawyers, and his prediction on how a market correction is coming to legal AI. More about Horace Wu: * Horace Wu on LinkedIn * Syntheia Website * Syntheia on LinkedIn * Further Comments Podcast (Apple Podcasts) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

We bring you this episode at the request of Nick’s rampant and admirable curiosity to tie legal technology to national security happenings (see his LinkedIn post)! After a few X messages and email exchanges, we’re ecstatic to have Jonathan Watson, Chief Technology Officer at Clio, on the podcast! As Hana starts her new job at the time of this recording, Nick and Jonathan talk about all things cybersecurity and what that means for law firms and start-ups. Before Jonathan became the CTO of a leading legal tech powerhouse, he worked as a carpenter, internet cafe owner, and professional gamer! But to stay on topic here, he served in leadership roles at Shopify and Zynga, which helps him in his current position at Clio. Jonathan brings a unique perspective to an evolving topic: how large language models (LLMs) are changing the nature of cyberattacks. The conversation started with the NSA/Cyber Command’s testimony suggesting adversaries can compromise systems in hours, rather than weeks. So how does this happen? How should law firms and companies like Clio defend themselves? To put it simply, as the true insight is in the episode, Jonathan implores law firms to implement best practices like multi-factor authentication, no shared logins, and choosing vendors with real security investment. For startups, good development hygiene is paramount from day 1. Password vaults, data segmentation, and early investment in observability will set them up for success. As for Clio, a “breach-first” mindset helps Jonathan stay ahead of the vulnerabilities to monitor and protect company and client data. Jonathan dives deeper into the topics briefly mentioned in this description, so watch or listen to learn about vulnerabilities, prompt injections, what attackers actually want, and how to limit risk. More about Jonathan Watson: * Jonathan Watson on LinkedIn * Clio Website * Clio on LinkedIn * Clio for Enterprise on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

If you’re a frequent listener of LegalTechLIVE, you might remember advice from a previous episode about knowing your audience and understanding who is making the buying decisions. For the founders out there, here’s a goldmine of an episode for you! As Hana settles into her first week at her new job, Nick Rishwain is joined by Jennifer Waite, Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer at Arnall Golden Gregory LLP. And trust us, the best advice, especially for securing enterprise customers, comes from people who give it to you straight. Jennifer started her career as a law librarian. She briefly practiced law afterwards and now leads AI and innovation strategy at an Am Law 200 firm. Despite the seemingly unconventional path, she argues the opposite: librarians are well suited to knowledge management roles, as they’re trained in taxonomies, data organization, and customer service. In her seven years working for AGG, she treats AI strategy as a “living framework” that’s reviewed quarterly and looks for tools that fit her firm's needs. So, what does this mean for vendors looking to have firms like AGG as a client? We won’t spoil that part of the episode, but Jennifer shares several examples of do’s and don’ts for vendor pitches and what she values most when evaluating and retaining tools. The “AI creates less work” sentiment is the antithesis for people like Jennifer. As a vendor, it’s in your best interest to approach Jennifer with all the information at the ready. Whatever you do, DON’T cold call or email her. Jennifer’s insight is now available in Episode 143, so watch or listen to stories about vendor relationship experiences, her role in knowledge management, and tools she’s looking for now. More on Jennifer Waite: * Jennifer Waite on LinkedIn * Arnall Golden Gregory LLP Website * Arnall Golden Gregory LLP on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

For our viewers in the legal technology space, you may have heard of Gordon Cassie, whose company, Closing Folders, was acquired by iManage in 2020. Now that he knows what it takes to build legal tech that gets adopted and acquired, he’s back with Eno PDF (Eno). Eno is an offline application that takes a different approach to AI-assisted document review, and a product Nick wished he had for his master’s classes. Anyways… here’s what we discussed. Most AI tools answer your questions with a generated summary and vague citations, but Eno is what Gordon calls “evidence-based AI.” It’s a zero-retention desktop app that surfaces the actual document snippets on screen so you can find what you’re looking for in your source material at 10x speed. Think of it as a “fuzzy Control F.” Because attorneys can’t afford to communicate paraphrases of the law to a client, this distinction is critical. Gordon’s time building Eno vastly differs from his Closing Folders days. Closing Folders’ audience was strictly for legal professionals, but anyone who uses PDFs can use Eno. He deliberately avoids taking VC money this time around and now views marketing as a valuable strategy to reach a wide range of professionals. Watch the episode to get detailed information about Gordon, Eno, and why locally run apps are becoming legal tech’s latest trend. More on Gordon Cassie: * Gordon Cassie on LinkedIn * Gordon Cassie on X * Eno Website * Eno on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

“And so.. we wanted to essentially be able to provide this same level of capability that people would’ve paid thousands and thousands of dollars for a forensic analyst.” - Dory Lord Anyone who has been divorced understands how strenuous it is to sift through years of financial documents, as if the divorce itself wasn’t mentally taxing (pun intended). It’s the last thing people want to deal with, and now it’s a process that lawyers and forensic accountants can expedite! CounselPro co-founders Ian O’Brien (CEO) and Dory Lord (CRO) share their story behind expediting forensic financial processes. After experiencing this exact issue himself, Ian looked for a simpler way to deal with his financial statements and couldn’t find anything satisfactory. Through market research, he discovered a need to automate financial evaluation for family law and bankruptcy attorneys. With Dory’s marketing operations and legal tech background, and Ian’s engineering and marketing expertise, they joined forces to create CounselPro. In Ian’s words, “CounselPro is so easy, even a lawyer can use it.” With its “drag, drop, done” interface, CounselPro’s platform ingests thousands of pages of financial documents. It'll organize PDFs, categorize every transaction, flag missing statement ranges, and allow attorneys to search and filter by merchant, date, account, and more. The output can withstand scrutiny, making it court-ready by design. This episode covers Ian and Dory’s path to entrepreneurship, why they’re targeting solo practitioners and small law firms, the industries they want to reach next, and their vision for CounselPro’s future. More about Ian and Dory: * Ian O’Brien on LinkedIn * Dory Lord on LinkedIn * CounselPro Website * CounselPro on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com

We are ecstatic to welcome back our first returning guest since LegalTechLIVE’s revival, Dorna Moini, CEO and Founder of Gavel! Last time she was on the show (Episode 49), Gavel was known as Documate. The company has come a long way since then, so much so that it was recently acquired by Relativity! Stay with us until the end for Dorna’s inside scoop on this VERY newsworthy event. Her journey began in Big Law at Sidley Austin, where she worked on pro bono cases for domestic violence survivors as a litigator. Her time there sparked the idea for a document automation platform, which was later known as Documate. So, despite the risks of leaving a secure full-time job, she bet on herself and quit to pursue entrepreneurship. Not long after launching Documate, she realized early on that the legal tech industry was headed toward an AI-centered direction. With the help of her team, investors, and a CTO with deep AI knowledge, Documate was rebranded to Gavel. The rebrand was a necessary move to encompass the added AI-native products that complement the original document automation service. And for those of you who know Dorna, you may have even participated in suggesting a name for the rebrand! All the decisions she’s made as a founder have paid off, and Gavel is now part of the legal AI platform, Relativity. Hear from Dorna herself about how understanding her customers has helped her business grow, the benefits of staying agile, the hardest decisions she’s had to make as a founder, and her thoughts on the recent acquisition. More about Dorna: * Dorna on LinkedIn * Dorna on Substack * Gavel Website * Gavel on LinkedIn * Gavel Acquisition Announcement This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.legaltechlive.com