Final Examination: What Does a Modern Investigative Platform Look Like for Law Firms?
Release Date: 09/18/2026
Adventures In Legal Tech
Diana Prince's firm just hit 75 lawyers, and the infrastructure behind those lawyers didn't grow with them. Beth Thompson of Actionstep joined me to unpack how a firm of any size can grow with software, clean processes, and better numbers instead of just more headcount. If your pre-bill queue is a mess and your reports only tell you what already happened, this one's for you. Key Takeaways Write down your growth plan and map every step a matter takes, including who touches the file and how often the client hears from you, before you add people or software. Don't onboard new hires onto...
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Chance Shifflett, head of product at Rev, joins Jared to unpack how solo and small-firm criminal attorneys can get a handle on the flood of evidence, body cam footage, jail calls, depositions, and thousands of documents, that discovery throws at them. He explains what makes an investigative platform different from a generic discovery tool, why verbatim transcription and accurate speaker diarization are non-negotiable in criminal cases, and why running privileged evidence through a generic AI tool is a real risk. He also lays out how to actually pilot legal AI before you trust it with a case....
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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...
info_outlineChance Shifflett, head of product at Rev, joins Jared to unpack how solo and small-firm criminal attorneys can get a handle on the flood of evidence, body cam footage, jail calls, depositions, and thousands of documents, that discovery throws at them. He explains what makes an investigative platform different from a generic discovery tool, why verbatim transcription and accurate speaker diarization are non-negotiable in criminal cases, and why running privileged evidence through a generic AI tool is a real risk. He also lays out how to actually pilot legal AI before you trust it with a case.
Key Takeaways
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An “investigative platform” is built to help you interrogate a body of evidence and find the truth, not just search a document set, and that is a different job than most discovery software does.
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Verbatim transcription, capturing every stutter, false start, and “mm-hmm,” matters in criminal cases because a polished transcript can smooth over the details that end up mattering to the outcome.
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Speaker diarization is still the hardest problem in legal transcription, especially on body cam footage and jail calls, where bad mics and background noise make it worse.
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When you pilot an AI tool, put your skeptics on it instead of your AI enthusiasts. They are the ones who will tell you what will actually break at your firm.
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AI can help draft documents and process evidence faster, but it cannot read a jury's emotions or tell a case's story, so the courtroom skills that make a great trial lawyer are not going anywhere.
Links and Resources
- Rev: rev.com
- Red Cave Law Firm Consulting: redcavelegal.com
- Listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube
Keywords
legal tech, legal technology, AI for lawyers, legal AI tools, e-discovery, investigative platform, evidence review, speaker diarization, verbatim transcription, legal transcription, body cam footage, jail calls, criminal defense technology, small law firm, solo practitioner, shadow AI, AI hallucinations, Rev, Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, Jared Correia
Episode Highlights
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[00:01:00 - 00:02:00] The vexing problem: Emma Stone's team is drowning in body cam footage, jail calls, depositions, and documents during discovery.
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[00:09:00 - 00:10:00] Chance calls speaker diarization the hardest problem in the market, especially on body cam and jail call audio.
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[00:11:00 - 00:12:00] Rev's own transcription workforce pushed back the first time the company built an AI model.
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[00:14:00 - 00:15:00] Rev paused all production for several weeks to rebuild its internal process around AI.
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[00:15:00 - 00:16:00] Why running privileged legal data through a generic AI tool is a real risk, not a shortcut.
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[00:21:00 - 00:22:00] Chance's pilot advice: put your AI skeptics on the test, not your true believers.
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[00:23:00 - 00:24:00] The adoption gap: a 25-person firm where five lawyers using AI jump from 95 cases to 130.
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[00:29:00 - 00:31:00] Why courtroom skills, like telling a story a jury will feel, cannot be automated.