As Women’s History Month wraps up, we’re taking a moment to recognize the hard work, dedication, and challenges—which go well beyond a month—of women in tech, especially those here at Casetext.
The accomplishments of women in tech are all the more striking when you consider the context in which they occur. The underrepresentation of women in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—is well-documented. As the American Association of University Women reports, women make up just 28% of the STEM workforce.
Legal tech sits at the intersection of law and technology, two fields disproportionately made up of men. It’s no surprise, then, that the gender gap is even wider in legal tech: research shows just 17% of legal tech founders are women.
Part of the ability of these women to bring an edge to legal technology stems from working in this environment. For one, just to have a presence, let alone success, requires defying the odds. By doing so, women in legal tech help set new norms and inspire other women to pursue careers in the field. Additionally, women in legal tech often bring new perspectives and fresh ideas, driving innovation and leading to better products and services that address the needs of more people. Data even suggests gender diversity in the sciences can foster fresh perspectives and encourage exploration in new areas.
Women whose legal tech accomplishments stand out include Leila Banijamali, co-founder and CEO of Symbium, a visionary building legal tech to help solve the housing crisis; Nicola Shaver, co-founder and CEO of LegalTechnologyHub, which seeks to democratize legal tech; and our very own Laura Safdie, co-founder and COO of Casetext.
Laura launched a successful career in law following training at Yale Law. She served in the Senate Judiciary Committee, clerked for Judge Paul Engelmayer in the Southern District of New York, and then went on to represent clients in civil matters as a litigator at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
During her clerkship Laura began to realize just how connected access to legal research and access to justice are. At the same time she realized both could be significantly increased by better legal tech, which was sorely lacking innovation.
Laura left traditional practice to co-found Casetext—whose original headquarters was in CEO Jake Heller’s living room—with the mission of building tools that expand access to legal research. Safdie’s influence in legal tech has been significant enough to earn her a place among the Top Women Leaders in Tech Law in California.
Casetext has since expanded (beyond legal research and that living room) to take the lead position in legal AI, but the mission and approach remain the same: empower lawyers to increase the quality and amount of work they’re able to do, for more people, by being bold, working quickly, and trying new things.
“Casetext is a diverse, driven team of smart people who bring their best to the table,” said Safdie, who also provided insight on the women driving Casetext forward. “We’re strengthened by the many women who contribute their talent and expertise. Women make up about half of our team and work across every department,” continued Safdie. “Many lead teams in developing cutting-edge AI tools, such as CoCounsel, and in providing the best possible support to Casetext customers.”
One of these leaders is Valerie McConnell, our Vice President of Customer Success. McConnell discovered Casetext in 2018 while looking for an alternative to Westlaw for her firm’s litigation practice. After using our CARA AI tool to find a critical case needed to win a motion, Valerie decided to join Casetext as an attorney product specialist in March 2019. Her goal was to build a best-in-class team to provide excellent training, support, and legal research expertise to Casetext’s customers.
Today, our customer success team includes top attorneys, software experts, and experienced customer support personnel—70% of whom are women— dedicated to ensuring our customers have a seamless experience. McConnell’s team consistently receives high customer satisfaction scores and is routinely cited as a key reason why customers use Casetext’s software products.
Valerie and her team are often the literal face of Casetext, supporting, training, and educating customers day-to-day. We’re also fortunate to have several women heading teams and leading development behind the scenes.
Stefanie Ambrosch, principal platforms and ops engineer, is a veteran front-end developer with a background in applied mathematics and computer science. She brought her extensive expertise in user interface design and a strong desire to make Casetext an intuitive, easy-to-use application.
And she’s done just that. Stefanie has helped transform the user experience over the course of nearly a decade at Casetext, where she kicked off her tenure as a frontend software engineer, moving to senior engineer and technical lead before reaching her current role.
We’re incredibly proud of the exceptional women on our team who are leading the way in legal tech. Their accomplishments are all the more impressive given the challenges they encounter in a field where women are underrepresented. As we continue to work toward a day when it’s no longer remarkable to have women leaders in this field, we appreciate those who are paving the way.
Rapidly draft common legal letters and emails.
How this skill works
Specify the recipient, topic, and tone of the correspondence you want.
CoCounsel will produce a draft.
Chat back and forth with CoCounsel to edit the draft.
Get answers to your research questions, with explanations and supporting sources.
How this skill works
Enter a question or issue, along with relevant facts such as jurisdiction, area of law, etc.
CoCounsel will retrieve relevant legal resources and provide an answer with explanation and supporting sources.
Behind the scenes, Conduct Research generates multiple queries using keyword search, terms and connectors, boolean, and Parallel Search to identify the on-point case law, statutes, and regulations, reads and analyzes the search results, and outputs a summary of its findings (i.e. an answer to the question), along with the supporting sources and applicable excerpts.
Get answers to your research questions, with explanations and supporting sources.
How this skill works
Enter a question or issue, along with relevant facts such as jurisdiction, area of law, etc.
CoCounsel will retrieve relevant legal resources and provide an answer with explanation and supporting sources.
Behind the scenes, Conduct Research generates multiple queries using keyword search, terms and connectors, boolean, and Parallel Search to identify the on-point case law, statutes, and regulations, reads and analyzes the search results, and outputs a summary of its findings (i.e. an answer to the question), along with the supporting sources and applicable excerpts.
Get a thorough deposition outline in no time, just by describing the deponent and what’s at issue.
How this skill works
Describe the deponent and what’s at issue in the case, and CoCounsel identifies multiple highly relevant topics to address in the deposition and drafts questions for each topic.
Refine topics by including specific areas of interest and get a thorough deposition outline.
Ask questions of contracts that are analyzed in a line-by-line review
How this skill works
Allows the user to upload a set of contracts and a set of questions
This skill will provide an answer to those questions for each contract, or, if the question is not relevant to the contract, provide that information as well
Upload up to 10 contracts at once
Ask up to 10 questions of each contract
Relevant results will hyperlink to identified passages in the corresponding contract
Get a list of all parts of a set of contracts that don’t comply with a set of policies.
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Upload a set of contracts and then describe a policy or set of policies that the contracts should comply with, e.g. "contracts must contain a right to injunctive relief, not merely the right to seek injunctive relief."
CoCounsel will review your contracts and identify any contractual clauses relevant to the policy or policies you specified.
If there is any conflict between a contractual clause and a policy you described, CoCounsel will recommend a revised clause that complies with the relevant policy. It will also identify the risks presented by a clause that does not conform to the policy you described.
Get an overview of any document in straightforward, everyday language.
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Upload a document–e.g. a legal memorandum, judicial opinion, or contract.
CoCounsel will summarize the document using everyday terminology.
Find all instances of relevant information in a database of documents.
How this skill works
Select a database and describe what you're looking for in detail, such as templates and precedents to use as a starting point for drafting documents, or specific clauses and provisions you'd like to include in new documents you're working on.
CoCounsel identifies and delivers every instance of what you're searching for, citing sources in the database for each instance.
Behind the scenes, CoCounsel generates multiple queries using keyword search, terms and connectors, boolean, and Parallel Search to identifiy the on-point passages from every document in the database, reads and analyzes the search results, and outputs a summary of its findings (i.e. an answer to the question), citing applicable excerpts in specific documents.
Get a list of all parts of a set of contracts that don’t comply with a set of policies.
Ask questions of contracts that are analyzed in a line-by-line review
Get a thorough deposition outline by describing the deponent and what’s at issue.
Get answers to your research questions, with explanations and supporting sources.