Ep 293: Litera’s Avaneesh Marwaha: The CEO Who Left Before AI and Returned to Lead Through It
Release Date: 06/04/2025
LawNext
This year’s ILTACON, which starts later this week, marks the second anniversary of , a global expert services company formed through the merger of three long-established legal consulting firms: HBR Consulting, LAC Group, and Wilson Allen, and that formally launched at ILTACON in 2023. The company, which counts among its clients some 80% of the 200 largest global law firms and 50% of the Fortune 500, has been making waves ever since, further expanding its services, making additional acquisitions, and scoring some notable hires to its executive team, all culminating in the news in...
info_outlineLawNext
What happens when a Harvard-trained corporate lawyer, tired of copying and pasting contract language, starts reading about self-driving cars? In case, it sparked the creation of , a contract lifecycle management company that just raised $54 million in Series B funding and that counts major companies such as Airbnb among its customers. In this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi sits down with Bijapur, CEO and cofounder of SpotDraft, to explore his journey from White & Case associate to legal tech entrepreneur. It all began with that pivotal New Year's Eve moment – working on due...
info_outlineLawNext
If generative AI was the biggest story in legal tech in 2023 and 2024, agentic AI is proving to be the most talked-about topic of 2025. Spurring this, at least in part, has been of its forthcoming release of a new agentic version of CoCounsel, its AI legal assistant, that will be able to plan, reason and execute complex multi-step workflows for legal professionals. On this episode of LawNext, we will dive deep into this next generation of AI legal assistants with two guests who are at the forefront of this field, leading the development of CoCounsel’s next generation: and . Both joined...
info_outlineLawNext
When legal research giant LexisNexis and legal AI giant Harvey , legal tech commentator “possibly the most important legal tech move in a decade.” On today’s episode of LawNext, we go deep into the partnership and its implications with , CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK & Ireland. Through the partnership, LexisNexis will integrate its primary law content, Shepard's citations, and AI technology directly into Harvey's platform, and the two companies will jointly develop agentic AI workflows. The partnership comes on the heels of Harvey's remarkable Series E funding round,...
info_outlineLawNext
, an AI-driven platform developed specifically for personal injury lawyers, has been generating a lot of buzz. On the heels of reporting record growth last year and raising $25 million in Series A funding in October, last month in a Series B round. But what do the lawyers who use the platform think of it? On today’s LawNext, we hear from one of those lawyers, as well as from the company’s cofounder and CEO. Our guests today are: , managing partner of the personal injury law firm . Schneider was an early adopter of Supio. He and his firm used it to help obtain a $495 million...
info_outlineLawNext
When was named CEO of legal technology company in 2022, he did so with the mission of aggressively advancing a cloud-first strategy throughout the company’s suite of business and financial software for law firms. Given that Aderant is a nearly 50-year-old company with many customers who still use the on-premises version of its software, that was not an easy mission to fulfill. So three years later, what grade does he give himself in delivering on that mission? That is one of the questions I put to him during a special live LawNext interview. We recorded the interview at Aderant’s ...
info_outlineLawNext
What happens when a CEO steps away from a legal tech company just before the generative AI revolution explodes, then returns two years later amid a landscape that is being dramatically transformed? For Litera’s , that is exactly what happened. As the CEO of Litera from 2016 to 2022, Marwaha led the legal tech company through a remarkable period of expansion and diversification, including growing its global customer base by over 1,500% and its annual revenues by 1200%, and overseeing some 14 acquisitions that transformed the company’s focus from document productivity to a broad range...
info_outlineLawNext
, president of the , brings a unique perspective to law librarianship, having spent 45 years in libraries across diverse settings — from a hospital library where he started as a student worker; to the former Whittier Law School; to prominent law firms Munger, Tolles & Olson and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; and, for the last 24 years, as law librarian in the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles. Winston joined host Bob Ambrogi to record this interview just weeks before AALL's annual meeting in Portland, Ore., July 19-22, with the theme "Be Bold." It's a fitting theme for a...
info_outlineLawNext
Monica Zent is a true pioneer in legal innovation and entrepreneurship. She is the founder of ZentLaw, an award-winning alternative legal services provider that broke the traditional law firm mold when she founded it in 2002. ZentLaw has since grown into a nationwide legal services provider, serving global brands and major corporations with a unique subscription-based model and flexible talent approach. But Monica's entrepreneurial journey extends well beyond ZentLaw. She's a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies, including early internet startups in the 1990s. She's a...
info_outlineLawNext
On May 5, 2025, , a technology company that specializes in helping corporate legal departments select and manage outside counsel, announced that it had acquired , a spend-management platform for corporate legal, in a move designed to create an end-to-end workflow solution spanning everything from matter intake to invoice payment. “This acquisition accelerates our ability to connect every point in the outside counsel workflow with intelligence,” , cofounder and CEO of PERSUIT, said at the time. “We’re not just managing spend — we’re turning it into performance.” This...
info_outlineWhat happens when a CEO steps away from a legal tech company just before the generative AI revolution explodes, then returns two years later amid a landscape that is being dramatically transformed? For Litera’s Avaneesh Marwaha, that is exactly what happened.
As the CEO of Litera from 2016 to 2022, Marwaha led the legal tech company through a remarkable period of expansion and diversification, including growing its global customer base by over 1,500% and its annual revenues by 1200%, and overseeing some 14 acquisitions that transformed the company’s focus from document productivity to a broad range of legal workflows, ranging from transaction management and due diligence to litigation, firm intelligence, and more.
Marwaha stepped down as CEO in 2022 to become Litera’s chairman, just before the tidal wave of gen AI swept over legal technology, and then, in a surprising move last October, he returned to the CEO role. On today’s LawNext, Marwaha shares how he was drawn to return as the company’s leader by the “perfect storm” of forces reshaping the legal industry of AI adoption, unprecedented legal tech investment, and evolving client expectations.
In today’s conversation, Marwaha reveals how AI has fundamentally rewired Litera's internal operations – enabling his 1,000-person company to complete quarters' worth of development work in mere weeks and transforming everything from code generation to meeting management. He also shares his personal AI workflow, including how he uses Microsoft Copilot to review up to 20 meeting transcripts nightly, and explains why he requires every Litera employee to be using AI every day – and why he believes this mandate is reshaping the company's competitive edge.
In addition, Marwaha unpacks Litera's strategic shift from acquiring dozens of companies during his first tenure to now favoring internal development – a change driven largely by AI's ability to rapidly accelerate innovation cycle, and he discusses Litera's evolution into what he calls "the experience company" for law firms, and how this transformation reflects broader shifts in legal technology, where success increasingly depends on workflow integration rather than standalone solutions.
Marwaha was formerly on this podcast in 2020: LawNext Episode 68: Litera CEO Avaneesh Marwaha on Growth During A Crisis.
Thank You To Our Sponsors
This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.
-
Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.
-
Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).
-
SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice
If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.