An Offer She Could Not Turn Down — Bridget McCormack on Joining Clio to Transform Technology for Judges

Robert Ambrogi (0:03)

Today on LawNext, the legal tech company Clio has long said that its mission is to transform the legal experience for all. Until now, that all has largely focused on law firms and their clients. Recently, Clio announced a major initiative to develop technology for the judiciary. As part of that initiative, it hired Pablo Arredondo, the former co-founder of Casetext and developer of CoCounsel, one of the first AI legal assistants, to lead product development. Arredondo was on this show on September 1st to discuss his new role. Now, Clio has made another major hire to help lead this project, Bridget Mary McCormack, the innovative former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and current President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association, will join Clio in October as General Manager, Judiciary to lead the market and commercial strategy for the judiciary business. On the day her hiring was announced, McCormack sat down with me to discuss why she considered this an offer she could not turn down, and how she believes she, Arredondo and Clio can transform the legal experience for the judiciary. I'm Bob Ambrogi and this is LawNext, a podcast that features the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what's next in law. If you forget to my interview with Bridget, please stay tuned to hear from the sponsors who so generously support this podcast.

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That was Good Today Show.

Bridget McCormick, welcome back to LawNext.

Bridget McCormack (2:20)

It's great to be back, Bob.

Robert Ambrogi (2:21)

Good to see you. It's great to see you. I say welcome back because you've been on a couple of times talking about your work at the American Arbitration Association, where you've been doing some very interesting stuff over the last few years. But we're here today to talk about your new job, I guess. You, on the day that we are recording this, has just been officially announced that you are going to Clio. You had announced that you're leaving AAA a week ago and left everybody wondering where you were headed and the news dropped today.

And you said when you announced a week ago that, well, first of all, congratulations. I think it's really exciting that you're doing this.

Bridget McCormack (3:04)

Yeah, thank you. It's a great opportunity, really important mission. I know we'll talk more about it.

Robert Ambrogi (3:10)

But I did want to turn to your announcement last week where you said that an opportunity came up that you could not turn down. So why is this an opportunity that you could not turn down?

Bridget McCormack (3:20)

Yeah, I mean, it's not one reason. That's part of why it's an opportunity I could not turn down.

But the decision by Clio, by Jack Newton, a pretty visionary CEO, to build a dedicated set of products and tools for judges. Because if you are serious about transforming the legal system for everyone, you can't leave courts out of-

Robert Ambrogi (3:44)

Which happens to be Clio's model.

Bridget McCormack (3:47)

It happens to be Clio's ambitious and bold mission, which I adore.

But you can't leave the courts out. As you and I both know, the change that we're seeing across the business of law and the practice of law over the last few years as a result of technology, largely AI has been pretty tremendous. The investment is tremendous. It's mostly aimed at the top of the market, which is understandable. I get that. But if courts aren't given the tools and the support to keep pace, the mission fails. And so I really have so much deep respect for Jack Newton for saying, we're going to work on that part of the equation, like that part of the frontier that needs to kind of come along for the ride. So Jack is a big part of the answer. The mission is a big part of the answer. The particular decision to just invest in this new team to build specifically new tools and products for, I think, a market that needs different tools and products than lawyers do. And then, as you know, because I think you broke this news too, hiring Pablo Arredondo and getting to work with Pablo is sort of kind of like a dream. It's like somebody recruited me for a neighborhood mixed doubles tournament, and Rafa Nadal was my doubles partner. So I think my job is to basically just get the ball to Pablo and stay out of his way, don't trip him.