Outside Providence: How to Fire Up a Growing Solo Law Firm
Release Date: 09/08/2026
Forward Lateral: How AI Is Impacting Legal Recruiting
Adventures In Legal Tech
Raj Selvadurai, founder of Gold Street Legal Search and Lateral IQ, has spent nearly twenty years placing lateral partners the old-fashioned way: relationships, referrals, and a lot of judgment calls about who actually fits where. On this episode, Raj explains why general AI tools like ChatGPT fall short for recruiting, how he built Lateral IQ to give partners and firms verified, self-service data, and why the real signal in lateral hiring isn't who a firm hires, it's who actually stays. If you've been wondering whether AI can touch a business this relationship-driven, this conversation has...
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Outside Providence: How to Fire Up a Growing Solo Law Firm
Adventures In Legal Tech
This week's vexing problem: solo attorney Ernie DiGregorio has no IT department and no fractional vendor to help him weigh AI tools against data security and client confidentiality. Michael Santomaro, principal of Santomaro Law in Providence, walks through how he actually uses AI across his personal injury and criminal law practice, from proofreading pleadings to finding federal court rules he'd never needed before. We also get into hallucination risk, the malpractice argument for using AI at all, and how Michael turned a deeply personal passion into a growing corner of his practice. Key...
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Inside In-House: What It's Really Like to Be In-House Counsel for a Legal Tech Vendor
Adventures In Legal Tech
Executive Summary Jared sits down with Carly Savar, general counsel at Steno, to unpack what actually happens when a law firm signs up with an AI vendor. Carly explains why reading the fine print matters more than any feature list, and what separates a vendor you can trust from one that's just telling you what you want to hear. Key Takeaways Read the actual data processing agreement yourself. Don't assume a vendor's security is handled just because they signed a service level agreement. Push for a zero-day retention agreement, and ask about the LLMs your vendor is built on, not just the...
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Immaculate Vibes - Building an AI-Literate Organization
Adventures In Legal Tech
Executive Summary On this episode of Adventures in Legal Tech, Jared Correia talks with Phillip Greer, CEO of Best Lawyers, about how AI is rewriting the rules of legal search and firm operations. Greer breaks down the real differences between SEO, AEO, and GEO, then explains how he turned his own company into a shop full of vibe coders. It's a practical look at getting found online and getting comfortable with AI at the same time. Key Takeaways SEO isn't dead. It's the foundation that feeds AEO and GEO, the practices that get law firms found inside AI search tools and chatbots. Quality,...
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Mind Map - The Intersection of Artificial Intelligence & Knowledge Management
Adventures In Legal Tech
Summary Law firms are drowning in scattered knowledge, and AI can't fix disorganized data on its own. Rachel Shields Williams, Director of AI and Knowledge Management at Bass, Berry & Sims and President of the Legal Marketing Association, joins Jared Correia to explain why structured data has to come before any AI rollout, and how firms can build the human relationships that make AI adoption safe. Key Takeaways AI can't structure your data for you. A firm's data represents its relationships and intellectual property, and only humans understand that context well enough to organize it. ...
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Grand Central Station - The Value of Case Management Software in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Adventures In Legal Tech
Summary “Attorney Matt Damon” needs to draft a demand letter, but the facts he needs are scattered across medical records, deposition transcripts, case notes, and email threads. Jared Correia brings in Claude Simpson, Vice President of Client Operations at Smart Advocate, to unpack why that scattered data problem is nearly universal in legal practice. Claude explains that documents, not buzzwords, still run the practice of law, and that AI only works well when it is pulling from a structured case management system. They cover client portals, the real costs of switching platforms, data...
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Skills Acquisition: How One Litigator Uses Claude to Build His Case Strategy
Adventures In Legal Tech
Summary Jared Correia sits down with Luis Vargas Rivera, head of litigation at Embedded Counsel, to unpack a problem most solo and small firm litigators never get to solve: a real moot before a hearing. Luis built a Claude skill called Adversarial Review that simulates a three-judge panel, each with a different mindset, to attack his motions before a judge ever does. From there, the conversation covers AI accountability and Rule 11, Luis's move from big law to a boutique firm, why marketing to referral sources beats paid ad spend, and how cross-practice litigation experience wins cases other...
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Voyage of Discovery: Why Managing ESI for Lawyers Is Easier Than Ever
Adventures In Legal Tech
Summary Law firms and legal departments sit on mountains of electronically stored information, and most have no real system for dealing with it. Warren Parrino, Regional Vice President of Solution Sales at TrustPoint.One, has a clear starting point: email threading, date filters, and search terms. From there, an early case assessment environment can cut review costs before a single document hits a reviewer's queue. Warren and Jared also cover modern attachments, audio and video redaction, and when AI actually earns its place in the workflow. The bottom line: AI only pays off after you...
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Search Engine: How to Create Content for the New Algorithm
Adventures In Legal Tech
Summary Alan Alda runs his own firm and figured AI tools would make content creation easy. He was half right. Jared Correia sits down with David Arato, founder of Lexicon Legal Content, to unpack why mass AI publishing is triggering Google penalties, what compliance risks law firms are ignoring in their marketing content, and how the rise of AI overviews is reshaping the entire game. David explains the EEAT framework, breaks down a three-level compliance review process for AI-generated content, and outlines what law firms should actually be doing to get cited in AI search results. The...
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Launch Protocol: How Law Firms Are Adopting AI in Real Time
Adventures In Legal Tech
Summary Jared Correia sits down with Sean McTigue, a partner at Bartko Pavia LLP and one of the more technically fluent attorneys in practice today. Sean unpacks how his firm navigated the leap from legal-specific AI tools to a direct enterprise deployment of Anthropic's models, and why he thinks that distinction matters a lot more than most firms realize. The conversation covers practical ground: how to use Westlaw's Quickcheck as a verification loop, why lawyers overestimate what AI will do for them on the first try, and how to find the early adopters inside a firm and turn their discoveries...
info_outlineThis week's vexing problem: solo attorney Ernie DiGregorio has no IT department and no fractional vendor to help him weigh AI tools against data security and client confidentiality. Michael Santomaro, principal of Santomaro Law in Providence, walks through how he actually uses AI across his personal injury and criminal law practice, from proofreading pleadings to finding federal court rules he'd never needed before. We also get into hallucination risk, the malpractice argument for using AI at all, and how Michael turned a deeply personal passion into a growing corner of his practice.
Key Takeaways
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Run every draft through AI before it goes out. Michael caught over twenty typos in a single complaint once he started running documents through AI, and in his book, typos in 2026 read as laziness, not just error.
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Using AI to rework a sentence or a closing argument isn't cheating, it's the same move as using a thesaurus or asking a colleague at the water cooler.
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AI can get you to an unfamiliar rule fast, but it can't replace reading the cases yourself. Hallucinated citations have already gotten lawyers sanctioned.
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If you've never touched AI, start small: feed ChatGPT an email you already wrote and see what it changes. Think of it as a curator, not a mystery box.
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Solo and small firms without in-house IT can still build real AI infrastructure with off-the-shelf add-ins for Microsoft, Adobe, and Lexis.
Links and Resources
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Santomaro Law: https://santomarolaw.com
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Red Cave Law Firm Consulting: https://redcavelegal.com
Keywords
legal tech, legal technology, AI for lawyers, legal AI tools, solo practitioner, small law firm, law practice management, law firm technology, ChatGPT for lawyers, AI hallucinations, legal ethics AI, client confidentiality, law firm marketing, personal injury law, legal research AI, document automation, shadow AI, Jared Correia, Adventures in Legal Tech, Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, AI malpractice risk
Episode Highlights
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[00:02:00 - 00:04:00] Michael explains Ernie DiGregorio's Providence College basketball legacy and his own family connection to him.
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[00:05:00 - 00:06:00] Michael shares the malpractice warning that pushed him to adopt AI: skip it, and you're falling behind opposing counsel.
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[00:07:00 - 00:08:00] Michael describes running a redacted complaint through AI and catching over twenty typos his staff missed.
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[00:08:00 - 00:09:00] Michael uses AI to find unfamiliar federal court rules on his first case removed from state court.
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[00:09:00 - 00:11:00] Michael pushes back on the idea that using AI to write is cheating, comparing it to a thesaurus or a colleague's input.
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[00:10:00 - 00:11:00] Michael flags the real risk: hallucinated case law and the sanctions lawyers have already faced for not checking it.
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[00:13:00 - 00:15:00] Michael's advice for AI beginners: run an email you already wrote through ChatGPT and see what changes.
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[00:20:00 - 00:23:00] Michael opens up about his personal connection to plant medicine and his work with the Psychedelic Bar Association.
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[00:26:00 - 00:30:00] Michael breaks down how referral relationships, not big ad spend, drive his caseload.