Welcome to the Legal Techo Chamber Power Rankings
Any consumer of sports media knows about Power Rankings. All the big websites have them for the NFL, NBA, MLB and everything from curling to badminton. But what if your favorite sport is legal tech? Then consider yourself lucky because we’ve got you covered.
Just like the AP’s college football rankings, each month we rank the most powerful men and women in Legal Tech from 1 to 25. What is our methodology? It’s as simple as it is hard to articulate: we identify who we think are the most powerful, interesting, innovative or important players in the legal tech community, and we rank them.
In some cases the power source is personal; in other cases it is almost 100% due to one’s role within their organization. Some on the list have made a lasting impact for many years; some will disappear soon and never make the list again.
Each list will reflect a moment in time, and at this particular moment, here are the 25 most powerful people in Legal Technology.
| Power Ranking | Name | Organization | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cornelius Grossman | EY Law | Buying Pangea3 Legal Managed Services from Thomson Reuters is the biggest move yet by any Big Four to grab serious market share in legal. That puts Grossman, the architect of EY Global Law strategy, at the top of the Power Rankings... for now. |
| 2 | Mary O’Carroll | Google/CLOC | |
| 3 | Neil Araujo | iManage | |
| 4 | Liam Brown | Elevate | |
| 5 | Eric Elfman | Onit | |
| 6 | Noah Waisberg | Kira | |
| 7 | David Cambria | Baker McKenzie | |
| 8 | Josh Baxter | NetDocuments | |
| 9 | Andrew Sieja | Relativity | Sieja has just handed over the CEO title to LinkedIn veteran Mike Gamson. It remains to be seen who will really call the shots going forward with Seija as exec chairman of the board who will work "more deeply with product and technical teams." This is a development worth watching -- will more seasoned CEOs and executives take the reins at legal tech scale-ups and consolidators? We think it's a good idea worth considering (see Axiom) -- so legal tech companies might avoid the heartache of revolving-door turnover and strategy chaos (see Neota). |
| 10 | Ed Walters | Fastcase | Walters is widely known and widely beloved as an (all-too-rare) voice of well-grounded reason and measured optimism on legal AI, an educator of important topics to the next generation of lawyers at Georgetown, and of course as the CEO of Fastcase (an early challenger among infuriatingly complacent giants in the research space). Fastcase has been making interesting moves with little fanfare and July will also see the 9th roster of the Fastcase 50 -- consistently one of the most diverse roundups of legal innovators and leaders, and often uncanny in calling tomorrow's movers and shakers. (Basically, he's the Dumbledore of #legaltech.) |
| 11 | Jason Barnwell | Microsoft | |
| 12 | Nick West | Mishcon de Reya | |
| 13 | Irish McIntyre | Thomson Reuters | The same winds of change that swirling around EY are also affecting Thomson Reuters , but the implications are quite different. As TR refocuses its core strategy on content and tech, Brian Peccarelli (#16) cracks the rankings as the head of business segment organization -- and many will be watching to see whether McIntyre can replicate his success from the Tax business to help TR play catch-up to build a viable platform play in Legal. |
| 14 | Shruti Ajitsaria | Allen & Overy | Ajitsaria is due for congratulations as she makes partner at the venerable Magic Circle firm Allen & Overy along a road less traveled. In just over 2 years at the helm of Fuse, A&O's legal tech incubator, Ajitsaria has posted an impressive track record: relatively greater transparency than many law firm incubators, interesting mix of nascent and mature investments across Fuse cohorts (iManage, Neota and Kira alongside more typically nascent startups) and at least one big win -- Cohort 2 startup Bloomsbury AI was acquired by Facebook last year. |
| 15 | Jae Um | Baker McKenzie | |
| 16 | Brian Peccarelli | Thomson Reuters | |
| 17 | Leif O’Leary | Intralinks | |
| 18 | Dan Leib | DFIN | |
| 19 | Jeff Marple | Liberty Mutual | |
| 20 | Bill Henderson | Indiana University Law | |
| 21 | Nick Baughan | Marks Baughan | |
| 22 | James Lee/Thomas Suh | LegalMation | |
| 23 | Jake Heller | Casetext | |
| 24 | Katie DeBord | Bryan Cave | |
| 25 | Doug Cullen | Merrill Corp. | |
| Also Ran: | Surprised to see some usual suspects missing from these inaugural Power Rankings? Worried we forgot about your fave? Here are a few who just barely missed the cut for July. | ||
| Jereon Plink | Clifford Chance | ||
| Jimmy Vestbirk | Legal Geek | The much anticipated Legal Geek conference has landed stateside, and despite the fanfare on Twitter, the chatter from private channels is that the event fell a bit short of expectations. A couple of speakers hit some high notes, but on the whole, many found the content flat and the venue oppressively sweltering. We applaud Jimmy's work in supporting legal tech startups, but we are calling it how it is. Better luck in October when the original LG runs again in London. | |
| John Hall | Intapp | InTapp is flashing PE cash to make moves with a string of acquisitions (DealCloud, gwabbit and OnePlace) in the span of 13 months, with marketing and influencer teams out in force at events like CLOC. These are moves worth watching as InTapp invests heavily to deliver its long-touted vision of building the true end-to-end full-stack solution to manage the full client lifecycle for the law firm... but the proof will be in the pudding. Plus, doubling up on two pricy CRM acquisitions seems a bit strange no matter the lengthy and overwrought explanations.of how complementary they are. | |