The Legal Dispatch: Recent Episodes
Tyson Ballard
Tyson Ballard speaks to some of the most inspirational and influential figures in the legal tech world about topics including their daily rituals, greatest failures and best recent purchases... It's legal tech, but not as you know it!
In this episode, Tyson Ballard interviews Scott Kelly, the product lead for AI and Automation at NetDocuments and co-founder of Afterpattern. Scott shares his journey from being a civil rights attorney at the ACLU of Pennsylvania to founding the legal tech startup Afterpattern, which focuses on legal process automation, and then transitioning to his current role at NetDocuments. He also discusses his unexpected path to law, his fascination with technology, and the challenges and opportunities of integrating AI into established products at NetDocuments.
NetDocuments is a leading cloud-based document management system designed for legal professionals.
Afterpattern is a legal tech company specializing in no-code automation tools for legal professionals, enabling streamlined workflows and document generation.
In this episode, Tyson Ballard speaks to Elizabeth De Stadler, the Founding Director of Novcon, Director of Rehabilitated Lawyer, and Hey Plain Jane, for an insightful discussion on plain language, contracts, and adding humour to law. They dive deep into the importance of plain language in legal documentation, its diverse applications, and it’s fascinating intersection with privacy law and behavioural science while gaining valuable insights into overcoming challenges, embracing failures, and fostering continuous learning in entrepreneurship.
Novcon is a consultancy specialising in translating complex documents into understandable language.
Rehabilitated Lawyer is a platform or initiative aimed at supporting lawyers in overcoming challenges and fostering personal growth within the legal profession.
Hey Plain Jane is a project or organization focused on promoting plain language and making legal documents more understandable and accessible.
In this episode, Tyson Ballard speaks to Andy Wishart, the Chief Product Officer at Agiloft. Andy shares his career journey, insights into legal tech, and entrepreneurship. He introduces himself as the head of product management at Agiloft and shares his extensive experience in the legal tech industry, including roles at Thomson Reuters and as the co-founder of Contract Express.
Agiloft is a leading provider of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software, offering robust solutions for contract management, workflow automation, and compliance.
In this episode, Tyson Ballard speaks to Sam Kidd, CEO and co-founder of LawVu. Sam provides valuable insights into the challenges of building and scaling a company, the importance of maintaining a balance between work and personal life and his journey in the legal tech industry.
LawVu is a legal tech company that specialises in providing software solutions for in-house legal teams and their external legal service providers. The company offers a cloud-based platform designed to streamline legal operations, enhance collaboration, and improve the efficiency of legal departments.
In this episode Tyson speaks to Electra Japonas, Founder & CEO of The Law Boutique and Co-founder of oneNDA, giving a candid look into her journey as an entrepreneur, lawyer and a mother.
The Law Boutique (TLB) is a legal consulting firm that focuses on providing legal services and solutions for businesses, with an emphasis on optimizing and streamlining legal processes.
oneNDA is aimed at revolutionizing the way Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) are handled in the legal industry.
In this episode Tyson speaks to Marie Potel-Saville known as “a legal design superhero”, Founder & CEO of Amurabi, a legal innovation and design agency.
Amurabi have a multidisciplinary approach to legal design, using various areas of design; service design, strategy, graphic design, UX design in their methodology to bridge the gap between the law and its users.
In this Episode Tyson talk to Denis Potemkin - CEO and founder of Majoto - a contract design and automation startup.
In this Episode Tyson talk to Tony Thai, the founder, CEO & Chief Engineer of HyperDraft - a legal tech tooling company that specializes in document automation software for lawyers and legal departments that make drafting simpler, better and faster. Tony started out as a software engineer before going to law school. His passion for technology was evident from an early age as he used the family computer to control the Christmas lights and automate their sprinkler system!
Tyson talks to Tony about lists, technology for golf, rock climbing, and the moment that inspired Tony to jump off the cliff and start HyperDraft, and how the pandemic fueled it into full swing.
In this episode Tyson speaks Michael Grupp, CEO of BRYTER, the leading no-code platform to automate expert knowledge. BRYTER is especially geared towards experts in law, finance, tax and compliance working with complex, conditional and scenario-based content who want to automate recurring and standardizable decision-making processes. They discuss what a day in the life of Michael looks like, what was the tipping point to leave the lawyering life and diving deep into the start-up world. The conversation covers BRYTER's true north and vision, the biggest challenges in Michael's role as well as his 'favourite' mistakes as an entrepreneur. Detours include the challeenges of working remotely, Michael's hypothetical Ted Talk subject and the importance of detours and failures along the way.
In this episode Tyson speaks to Noah Waisberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Zuva, an AI company that helps people pull data out of contracts using their API which comes with 1,200 fields straight out of the box and can plug in to various existing applications.
They discuss Noah's 'fairytale' journey from New York corporate lawyer to two-time start-up entrepreneur, his experiences as a Canadian CEO living in Paris, and how and where he does his best thinking.
Digressions include Noah's ability to come up with intriguing business names, how kid-learning compares to machine-learning and his surprising penchant for organic, unflavoured, protein powder.
In this episode, Tyson speaks to Maya Markovich, a start-up advisor, legal tech and justice tech investment advisor, and a legal innovation consultant. Maya works with teams from legal operations, to ALSPs, to law firms, helping them deliver tech enabled services.
They discuss Maya's career journey through the emerging world of legal tech, her morning routines and how start-ups are helping to bridge the access to justice gap.
Detours include Dr. Philip Zimbardo, cocktails, and Maya & Tyson's extensive travel resumes...
Tyson continues his new podcast series with Ajay Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of SirionLabs. They discuss why Ajay has chosen to relocate back to India, his thinking process and how he came to found two highly successful legal start-ups in the last 15 years.
Detours include capital funding near-misses, how SirionLabs got its name from an obscure Tolkien reference and the joys of cycling for exercise and mindfulness (where Ajay definitely does not ride an eBike)...
Ajay Agrawal started his career as a black letter lawyer on Wall Street having trained at Cambridge and Columbia. in 2006 he founded UnitedLex, alongside Daniel Reed, which was one of the earliest legal process outsourcing companies, Having been drawn to legal tech and the problem of "contract education", Agrawal sold his stake in United Lex and founded SirionLabs in 2012, where he is using artificial intelligence technology to disrupt the field of enterprise contract lifecycle management.
Tyson Ballard kicks off his new podcast series with Alistair Maiden, CEO & Founder of SYKE. They discuss how Alistair ended up leaving ASDA to found SYKE, his decision-making process and morning rituals. Detours include evangelising about golf, discussion of Andy Murray's work ethic and how Alistair juggles being a CEO with being a dad of 3...