Ep 287: From Ravel Cofounder to Knowable CEO, Nik Reed Has Learned that Building Quality AI for Legal Takes A Lot of Hard Work
Release Date: 04/15/2025
Ep 287: From Ravel Cofounder to Knowable CEO, Nik Reed Has Learned that Building Quality AI for Legal Takes A Lot of Hard Work
LawNext
In the gold rush of generative AI, it seems that every legal tech vendor wants to be a one-stop shop for legal technology. But after 15 years of developing legal tech, , CEO of , a legal technology company devoted to helping enterprises bring order and organization to their executed agreements, believes that lawyers should be wary of the hype. Often, the most successful AI solutions are those that focus on solving specific problems exceptionally well rather than attempting to be all things to all lawyers. On today’s LawNext, Reed joins host Bob Ambrogi for a conversation that explores...
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Ep 286: When the Unthinkable Becomes Real: Three Legal Tech Leaders On Losing Their Homes To The Los Angeles Wildfires
LawNext
In January, a merciless firestorm swept through the Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas of Los Angeles, becoming the most destructive wildfire in the city's history. Driven by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds and fueled by record-dry conditions, the Palisades Fire destroyed over 6,800 structures, burned nearly 24,000 acres, and dramatically altered the lives of thousands of residents. Among them were three individuals with deep ties to the legal tech community, each of whom lost their home to the fire. This week on LawNext, we speak with those three individuals: Valerie Chan,...
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Ep 285: Mark Cohen and Dierk Schindler On The Union Of the Digital Legal Exchange and the Liquid Legal Institute
LawNext
As reported yesterday in an exclusive at LawSites blog, two leading international legal transformation organizations, the (DLEx) and the (LLI), have joined forces in a strategic union that brings together more than 1,500 members representing more than 140 multinational corporations, organizations, institutions and agencies across more than 20 countries. On today’s LawNext, two of the principles of that union — Mark Cohen, chairman emeritus of DLEx, and Dr. Dierk Schindler, cofounder of LLI — join host Bob Ambrogi to discuss their vision of creating the world’s leading think...
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Ep 284: Relativity CEO Phil Saunders on the Future of Legal Data, Gen AI, and the Shifting Landscape of Law
LawNext
“The landscape we all stand on is shifting, and massive amounts of change are upon us,” , the chief executive officer of e-discovery and legal technology giant , recently wrote in . Driving that change are three transformative forces, he wrote: new legal data challenges, advancing generative AI, and legal’s journey to the cloud. On this episode of LawNext, Saunders – who joined Relativity as CEO in 2022 after three decades in the technology sector – joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss why he believes that both Relativity and the legal industry at large are at a pivotal moment,...
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Ep 283: SurePoint CEO Eric Thurston on Acquiring ZenCase and His Vision for Mid-Market Practice Management
LawNext
Recently, legal technology company acquired the legal practice management company in a strategic move aimed at enhancing SurePoint’s practice management offerings for mid-sized law firms. In this episode of LawNext, , who recently marked his two-year anniversary as CEO of SurePoint Technologies, joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss the acquisition and share his perspective on the mid-market landscape in law. Originally founded in 1982 as Rippe & Kingston, SurePoint has established itself as a leading provider of financial and practice management software for mid-sized law firms,...
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Ep 282: How A New Documentary Aims To Raise Public Awareness Of The Access To Justice Crisis
LawNext
On this week’s show: LawNext takes you to the movies. Well, to a specific movie, anyway – a documentary being made to raise public awareness and understanding of the access to justice crisis in this country. Today’s guests are the film’s director, documentary filmmaker , who previously directed The Tent Mender, about homelessness on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and , a legal innovation leader – and two-time previous guest on this show ( and ) – who is serving as a producer and advisor to the documentary. You may know Markovich as executive director of the Justice Technology...
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Ep 281: Eve CEO Jay Madheswaran on Building AI-Native Law Firms for the Plaintiffs’ Bar
LawNext
After building his career as an engineer at Facebook and as a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners, and his cofounders spotted an opportunity to deploy cutting-edge AI to transform what they saw as an underserved segment of the legal market, launching , an AI platform purpose-built for plaintiffs’ law firms. Eve has quickly gained traction, recently securing a $47 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, and boasting 800% year-over-year growth. But what makes Eve’s story particularly interesting is its mission to transform traditional plaintiffs’ firms into...
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Ep 280: Is Arbitrus.ai the Future of Dispute Resolution?
LawNext
Earlier this month, a legal tech startup called Fortuna Arbitration launched what it says is – an automated arbitration system called that the company claims can fully replace human arbitrators in resolving legal disputes. The system promises to cut the cost of arbitration from an average of $100,000 to just $10,000, while delivering consistent, unbiased decisions within 72 hours. On this week’s LawNext, our guests are two of the founders behind this ambitious project. is a partner at Husch Blackwell and an experienced commercial litigator. He is also the inventor of the , a computer...
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Ep 279: Upsolve’s Jonathan Petts and Ben Jackson on Building the TurboTax for Bankruptcy and Fighting UPL Restrictions
LawNext
When former Wall Street lawyer joined forces in 2016 with , then a research assistant in Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab, and , a software engineer, to create Upsolve, they had a simple but powerful vision: make bankruptcy filing as accessible as online tax preparation for Americans crushed by debt. Today, their nonprofit has helped over 16,000 low-income families discharge more than $700 million in debt through Chapter 7 bankruptcy – all at no cost to users. In this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Petts, now Upsolve’s CEO, and , an ex-Uber driver who...
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Ep 278: Standardizing Legal Agreements: How OneNDA and OneSaaS Aim to Transform Business Contracting
LawNext
When it comes to contract negotiations, lawyers often find themselves spending countless hours haggling over standard agreements such as NDAs and SaaS contracts, with both sides often saying more or less the same thing, but in different words. What if there was a better way? Today’s guests believe there is. , chief legal officer at and founder of the successful oneNDA initiative, and , Law Insider president, are on a mission to revolutionize contract negotiations by developing and open-sourcing a suite of standard agreements. They started with oneNDA, which has been adopted by over...
info_outlineIn the gold rush of generative AI, it seems that every legal tech vendor wants to be a one-stop shop for legal technology. But after 15 years of developing legal tech, Nik Reed, CEO of Knowable, a legal technology company devoted to helping enterprises bring order and organization to their executed agreements, believes that lawyers should be wary of the hype. Often, the most successful AI solutions are those that focus on solving specific problems exceptionally well rather than attempting to be all things to all lawyers.
On today’s LawNext, Reed joins host Bob Ambrogi for a conversation that explores what makes legal AI actually work well in practice. It is a topic he has been thinking about, in one form or another, since he was still a student at Stanford Law School, where he co-founded the legal research startup Ravel with classmate Daniel Lewis in 2012. After LexisNexis acquired Ravel in 2017, Reed moved into strategic product management there, and then joined Knowable in 2019 to lead its product research and development. He became the company’s CEO last November, just as the company launched Ask Knowable, its generative AI suite.
In a conversation that explores what makes legal AI actually work in practice, Reed emphasizes the critical importance of pristine data environments, high-quality metadata, and clearly defined use cases. “It's still hard to build really good products, especially for lawyers, and it takes a lot of hard work,” Reed says. “ And anyone that's telling you that that's not the truth is probably already a product that you shouldn't be using.”
But ultimately, he believes, AI has the potential to restore balance to legal practice by handling the rote work lawyers never wanted to do, allowing them to return to what they went to law school for – critical reasoning and solving complex problems.
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