LawNext on Location: Lunch with Alex Su of Latitude Legal In Alameda, Calif.
Release Date: 02/18/2026
Law Democratized: Renee Knake Jefferson on Her Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis
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Martin Luther King famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." My guest today quoted his words in her 2024 book, . But now, two years after that book's publication — at a moment when many see the rule of law under strain and speak openly of democratic backsliding — it is fair to ask: Are we still arcing toward justice? That is the question LawNext host Bob Ambrogi put to at the start of today’s conversation. Jefferson is a professor of law and the Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center, and her work...
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Inside Claude for Legal: Anthropic's Mark Pike on AI's Next Frontier in Law
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When Anthropic launched Claude for Legal in May – more than 20 MCP connectors and a dozen practice-area plugins built specifically for legal work – it marked the company's biggest and most explicit commitment yet to the legal industry. It also reignited a debate that's been simmering since Anthropic's first legal plugin briefly rattled the stock prices of Thomson Reuters, RELX and Wolters Kluwer back in January: Is Anthropic’s entry into the legal market a major step forward for legal productivity? Or is it a threat to trust, governance and the existing legal-tech infrastructure? ...
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Legal Research for Everyone: Inside the CourtListener - Claude Partnership
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Last month, when Anthropic, developer of the popular AI assistant Claude, announced , much of the coverage in the media and the buzz on social media focused on what the announcement meant for law firms, in-house legal teams, and the legal tech ecosystem. But the less talked about side of the story was potentially the more impactful – Anthropic’s explicit commitment to access to justice, highlighted by a direct partnership with the and its free legal research platform. Suddenly, anyone with a legal problem and a chat window could access verified, authoritative legal materials,...
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Amy Juers and Valerie Chan on Marketing Legal Tech in the Age of AI Search
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Once upon a time, a legal tech vendor’s goal in getting seen by potential customers was to rank on the first page of Google search. But in the age of AI, that is no longer enough. Now, when a potential buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to recommend a vendor, what matters is whether the company shows up in the answer the AI generates. And that, increasingly, depends on who is quoting you, citing you, and treating you as the authority in your category. On this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi talks with two legal marketing and communications leaders who are seeking to help their...
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New Casepoint CEO Paul Colangelo on AI, GovTech and the Road Ahead
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When Thoma Bravo in in January 2025 and merged it with the government-software company OPEXUS, it set the e-discovery pioneer on a broader course — deeper into the government market and squarely into FOIA and case management. Now the company has a new leader to see that course through: , a 25-year veteran of government and enterprise software, who was . In this episode, recorded just before the announcement, Colangelo joins host Bob Ambrogi for his first podcast interview in the role. He talks about the mandate he's been handed 18 months into the Thoma Bravo era, why he believes...
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Context Is Everything: CEO Neil Araujo on iManage's AI Strategy
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, the CEO and cofounder of , was last on this podcast . In the dog years of the legal industry’s AI age, that feels like a long time ago. Our conversation then was about law firms still feeling their way around generative AI. But now, as you will hear in this episode, the focus is about what it actually takes to put AI to work at scale — and iManage's answer is that it starts with what Neil calls a knowledge foundation: the content, context and governance layer that makes AI responses not just fluent, but relevant and trustworthy. Two weeks before we recorded this episode, iManage ...
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How AI Is Transforming the Way Law Firms Win Business, with Ikaun President Jason Noble
LawNext
Law firms sell experience — but for decades, harnessing and operationalizing that experience has been a largely manual, chaotic process. In this episode, recorded live at the Legal Marketing Association annual conference in New Orleans, host Bob Ambrogi sits down with , president and chief of product strategy at , to talk about how his company is changing that. Ikaun is a managed service and technology platform that helps law firms streamline the proposal and RFP response process — from capturing and organizing matter experience data to using AI to assemble and draft competitive pitches....
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Legal Marketing Association President Rachel Shields Williams On AI, Innovation, and Why People Still Come First
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Recorded live at the annual meeting of the in New Orleans, this episode features a conversation with , president of the LMA and director of client intelligence at Sidley Austin, where she has spent 17 years building out roles at the intersection of marketing, business development, knowledge management and data. Earlier this year, Rachel was named a recipient of ALM's . Rachel and host Bob Ambrogi discuss how AI is reshaping the work of legal marketers, and why she believes the marketing community is uniquely positioned to help law firms move past the "I'm curious, I want to click the buttons"...
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Built on a Weekend: Damien Riehl and Mike Bommarito Show What Vibe Coding Can Really Do
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We don’t usually say this, but for today's LawNext, you’re going to want to watch the video version, if you can. The audio will be good, but the video will be great. You can find it . Why? Because we’re going to be talking today about vibe coding, and you're going to want to see what our guests are showing today, not just hear them tell about it. Those guests are and . By day, Damien works on AI products at Clio and Mike is CEO of 273 Ventures, a company that provides AI strategy and services for law firms and legal professionals. But outside their day jobs, they are also founders...
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Learned Hand’s Shlomo Klapper on Why Courts Are the Next Frontier for Legal AI
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Are courts the next frontier for legal AI? , founder and CEO of the AI-driven judicial case-preparation platofrm , believes they are. A former litigator at Quinn Emanuel and law clerk for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Klapper is building what he calls a "reasoning engine" for judges — AI tools designed to help them manage crushing caseloads by organizing case materials, flagging when lawyers bend the truth, and drafting bench memos and orders. LawNext host Bob Ambrogi interviews Klapper on the heels of significant news: Learned Hand just announced a partnership with the Superior...
info_outlineThis episode is recorded live, and is best enjoyed on YouTube. Watch the episode here.
While Bob is visiting San Francisco for two weeks, he is sitting down for conversations with legal tech innovators and entrepreneurs “in their natural habitats” – places in the Bay Area they consider special. Today, in the first in this series, Bob sits down for lunch with Alex Su, chief revenue officer at Latitude Legal, over Thai iced tea and tofu dishes at Phnom Penh House, a Cambodian restaurant in Alameda that Alex considers something of a personal institution, frequenting it for both family meals and business meetings.
Alex's career path is anything but linear. He started as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, clerked for a federal judge in Chicago, then drifted through a plaintiff's firm, a brief solo practice, and ultimately a leap of faith into legal tech sales – joining e-discovery company Logikcull in 2016. From there, he moved to Everlaw, then to Ironclad, where he served as head of community development, building a reputation that spread well beyond any job title.
That reputation was shaped in large part by TikTok, where Alex's comedic, self-effacing videos skewering law firm culture – partners, associates, privilege logs and the absurdities of BigLaw – earned him more than 100,000 followers, got shared inside Ironclad's internal Slack, and ultimately helped land him his next job. It's a story of accidental virality and deliberate reinvention that mirrors the broader shifts he sees in the legal profession.
Now at Latitude Legal, an ALSP providing on-demand legal talent to law firms and corporate legal departments, Alex represents a kind of poetic symmetry: a lawyer known for championing "alternative careers" working at an "alternative legal services provider" — a label he thinks has outlived its usefulness, given how mainstream flexible legal talent has become.
Bob and Alex also dig into the current state of legal AI – what's overhyped, what's underhyped, and why the pandemic was arguably a bigger inflection point for legal tech adoption than generative AI. Plus, Alex and Bob reflect on Bob’s three decades of covering legal innovation, the stubborn persistence of the billable hour, and why the justice gap remains stubbornly wide despite all the talk of disruption.
It is a wide-ranging and candid conversation – one you may want to watch on video instead of just listening to the audio.
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.
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Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.
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Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).
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Legalweek, March 9-12, North Javits Center, New York City.
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Chapters
00:00 Intro to Today's Lunch: A Special In-Person Series
04:45 Career Transitions: From Law to Legal Tech
23:27 Going Viral: The TikTok Journey
25:10 Balancing Humor and Professional Identity
26:54 Redefining Career Paths for Lawyers
28:39 The Evolution of Legal Careers
30:35 Innovation in Legal Practice
34:07 The Impact of the Pandemic on Legal Technology
34:28 The Future of Legal Technology and AI
38:10 Navigating Uncertainty in Legal Services
40:18 The Ongoing Relevance of Traditional Legal Models
42:11 Personal Reflections and Future Outlook