As chief technology officer at Casetext,\u00a0Ryan Walker\u00a0helped build CoCounsel, one of the first and most consequential generative AI legal assistants \u2014 a product so significant it led to the company\u2019s\u00a0$650 million acquisition by Thomson Reuters. But Walker came away unsatisfied. Although the legal tech tools kept getting better, he believed, clients were seeing no benefit. [\u2026]<\/p>\n
As chief technology officer at Casetext,\u00a0Ryan Walker<\/a>\u00a0helped build CoCounsel, one of the first and most consequential generative AI legal assistants \u2014 a product so significant it led to the company\u2019s\u00a0$650 million acquisition by Thomson Reuters<\/a>. But Walker came away unsatisfied. Although the legal tech tools kept getting better, he believed, clients were seeing no benefit. Billing rates kept climbing and the efficiency gains never reached them.<\/p>\n That spurred him to pivot from building products to forming a practice \u2014\u00a0General Legal<\/a>, an AI-native law firm he cofounded and leads as CEO, built on the premise that the fastest path to transforming legal services is not retrofitting AI onto traditional firms, but rebuilding the law firm from the ground up on an AI-forward foundation. Just six months out of Y Combinator, the firm has some 400 clients, a newly launched venture financing practice, and, in what may be a first for a law firm, an MCP server that lets clients\u2019 AI agents engage the firm directly.<\/p>\n In this episode of LawNext, Walker \u2014 not a lawyer but a PhD mathematician \u2014 tells host Bob Ambrogi why he believes AI can now automate 95% of routine legal work, how the management services organization structure allows an investable technology company to operate alongside a law firm, and why an AI-native firm paradoxically depends on hiring highly experienced lawyers rather than supercharging junior ones. He also explains the \u201csecond brain\u201d approach that lets the firm\u2019s work product reflect each client\u2019s strategy, what earlier failed innovators like Atrium and Clearspire got wrong, and why he thinks the real reckoning will come when major clients simply refuse to pay for work AI can do.<\/p>\n Walker cofounded the firm along with two other Casetext colleagues,\u00a0Javed Qadrud-Din<\/a>, who was head of AI at Casetext and is now General Legal\u2019s chief technology officer, and\u00a0J.P. Mohler<\/a>, who was an LLM engineer at Casetext and is now chief product officer and managing partner. Their ultimate ambition, Walker says, is to make General Legal the biggest provider of legal services in the world and, along the way, to break the scarcity model that keeps legal help out of reach for the people and companies who need it.<\/p>\n Listen here:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Watch here:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n