Without Limitation

Elliott Portnoy, the strategist who built Dentons into the world’s largest law firm through rapid, unconventional mergers. He discusses transitioning from Capitol Hill to law, the polycentric global model, why rapid M&A and integration mattered, how AI and private equity are reshaping legal services, and what a modern law firm CEO must prioritize.

Zack Shapiro, founder of Reigns and Head of Policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, is a startup lawyer focused on venture financings, crypto regulation, and AI in practice. He explains why he built a Claude-native workflow, how he encodes legal judgment as reusable Skills, and how AI changes document editing, billing models, and scaling a law practice.

Dr. Sarah Stephens, a legal technologist who built Dada Wakili and leads innovation at Sussex Centre for Law and Technology, discusses creating an AI WhatsApp assistant to help women navigate Tanzania’s plural legal systems. She talks about moving from corporate law to grassroots justice, design challenges like languages and feature phones, AI’s practical limits in legal triage, and plans to scale via USSD/SMS and an AI law lab.

Richard Tromans, founder of Artificial Lawyer and commentator on legal tech with roots in journalism and consulting. He talks about how his Industrial Revolution upbringing and varied early jobs shaped system thinking. Conversations cover why AI adoption in law feels finally real, billing and business-model barriers, pressures on big law, and how firms might redesign themselves as technology changes.

Michael Bommarito, entrepreneur and researcher blending AI, law, and finance, co-author of the GPT bar exam studies and founder of the ALEA Institute. He recounts the bar exam experiment that changed legal AI, the Leaky tool for training-data issues, the rise of agentic AI and governance gaps, how law firms and education must adapt, and the social impact of trillion-dollar data center buildouts.

JP Moeller, attorney and former legal-tech engineer who co-founded AI-native General Legal. He describes building a firm that reinvests in efficiency, the Slack-first client workflow with fast AI-assisted markups, and the attorney-attention engine that triages contracts. They focus on routine commercial work like MSAs, NDAs and DPAs, explain pricing/SLAs, and contrast AI-native structure with traditional Big Law.

Helder Santos, leader of Bird & Bird’s global innovation team and law-tech veteran, describes why vibecoding matters. He talks about rapid prototyping with tools like Betty Blocks. He explores governance and safe handoffs, the maintenance and scalability dilemma, shifting training toward product thinking, and how firms can balance speed with sustainable controls.

Richard Bircher, founder of Validatum and creator of Virtual Pricing Director with decades advising law firms on pricing and profitability, discusses AI and fees, transparency and benefit-sharing, productised legal services, competition and procurement realities, the need for shared pricing language, and why firms must embrace creative destruction while building confidence in their value.

Mary Bonsor, founder of Flex Legal who built a platform linking legal talent to firms and championed social mobility. She discusses shifting from litigator to founder, raising early funding, how AI is reshaping junior roles, productising legal work, piloting client-led services, and the importance of long-term relationships and curiosity for future lawyers.