I spent a decade running a legal analytics firm before Legal Ops was a formalized role. I started SimpleLegal to modernize eBilling and then sold it in 2019. Then I spent time as COO and CFO of two companies under CEOs who were just flat out better than me in many ways. I learned a ton. Now I'm back, building on what I've learned over the last 20 years.
Legal's distraction problem
Legal departments constantly get pinged for urgent and important but routine tasks. Someone wants to know where to find the latest MSA. Something they'd know if they just checked the document portal. But Slack makes it easy to just ping legal. Someone else has a question about a policy that's already documented, but it's easier to ask legal than to go find it.
I've watched this pattern for 20 years. A Legal Ops manager builds out a knowledge base, writes up every policy, documents every process. Six months later they're still fielding the same questions because nobody goes to the knowledge base. The documentation exists. People just don't use it. So the most knowledgeable person on the team becomes the help desk, and the strategic work gets pushed to nights and weekends.
These aren't hard questions. They're routine, but frequent. They're distractions from the work that actually needs a lawyer's attention.
Why now?
AI changed the software ecosystem in two ways that matter.
First, AI changed what software can do. Legacy SaaS organizes the work, but people still do that work. With AI, software now does the routine work, so that people can focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact. That's not an incremental improvement. It's an entirely different software category.
Second, it changed the relationship between vendor and customer. Previously, Build vs. Buy always meant Buy because Build wasn't realistic. Now, AI makes Build attainable. Non-engineers, who were previously limited to only documenting the challenges they faced, can now create solutions. AI gives customers options. When customers have real options, vendors have to work harder to earn the relationship.
What we're building
We built an AI-enabled knowledge base that we hope your employees never have to log in to. They ask questions over Slack, Teams, Zoom Chat, or email. Our AI assistant answers when it can, protecting you and your team from the important but routine questions. When it can't, it raises its hand to ask your team to step in. When you answer a question, the AI assistant learns from your answer. So you will never answer the same question twice ever again.
While other vendors push more user engagement in their software, we're looking for ways to reduce the time you spend in ours.
That's why I came back. Twenty years of watching the most knowledgeable people on legal teams become help desks. Now, with AI, we can fix that.