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Where I interview Damien Riehl, solutions champion at vLex, whose unique blend of legal expertise and brainy technological innovation has revolutionized how we think about legal tech
Revolutionizing Legal Technology Through Systems Thinking and Service
Join me as I interview Damien Riehl, solutions champion at vLex, whose polymath approach to legal innovation spans artificial intelligence, data standardization, music copyright, and cybersecurity.
In this insightful podcast episode, Damien shares his remarkable journey from small-town North Dakota roots through music education, federal judicial clerkships, BigLaw litigation, and ultimately to the cutting edge of legal technology. He dives deep into his work with vLex’s billion-document dataset and large language models, his groundbreaking SALI project that created interoperability standards for legal data, and his extraordinary music copyright initiative that has copyrighted 471 billion melodies to protect artists from frivolous lawsuits.
His stories and insights underscore a deep commitment to using technology for public benefit, including his pro bono work on data standards and his role investigating Cambridge Analytica at Facebook. This episode demonstrates how combining technical expertise with legal knowledge can create solutions that serve both the profession and society at large.
[This interview was recorded prior to the announcement of Clio’s acquisition of vLex.]
The Skinny
Damien Riehl, solutions champion at vLex, represents a new breed of legal technologist whose work spans artificial intelligence, data interoperability, music copyright law, and cybersecurity. Growing up in small-town North Dakota with a boilermaker father who instilled strong work ethics, Damien’s path led through music education, federal judicial clerkships, nine years of BigLaw litigation at Robbins Kaplan, and pioneering roles at Thomson Reuters and Fastcase. His Catholic upbringing drives a commitment to service that manifests in groundbreaking pro bono projects: the SALI data standardization initiative that enables interoperability between legal systems worldwide, and a music copyright project that has protected artists by copyrighting 471 billion melodies and placing them in the public domain. His work demonstrates how combining technical expertise with legal knowledge can democratize access to justice and solve systemic problems affecting both the legal profession and society at large.
Key Takeaways:
- Started coding at age 10 on a Commodore 128, building the technical foundation for legal innovation
- Wrote 52 judicial opinions per year during federal clerkships, gaining exceptional breadth of legal experience
- Spent nine years at Robbins Kaplan on major cases like tobacco litigation with top-tier litigators
- Created patented task-based legal project management system at Thomson Reuters
- Built SALI project with 18,000 standardized legal data tags in 20 languages for vendor interoperability
- Copyrighted 471 billion melodies to protect artists from frivolous copyright lawsuits
- AI can address 92% of unmet legal needs through dramatic cost reduction and Jevons paradox
- Catholic faith drives thousands of hours donated to pro bono public benefit projects
- ADHD diagnosis at 47 explains ability to juggle multiple complex projects simultaneously
Notable Quotes:
- “I think we’re going to have abundance if we let it. That is if we don’t muck it up. And I think the risk of mucking it up is quite high.” – Damien Riehl (44:40-44:45)
- “Everything we as lawyers do is based on words. We ingest them, we analyze them, and we output words. Large language models can do that at superhuman speed in a postgraduate level.” – Damien Riehl (15:04-15:13)
- “We can’t pro bono our way out of this, but maybe we can large language model our way out of this.” – Damien Riehl (45:28-45:31)
- “What if legal work were too cheap to measure? What if today or yesterday, somebody might say, gosh, Tom, my lawyer, every time I call him, it’s $1,000. Forget it. I’m just going to risk it.” – Damien Riehl (46:41-46:50)
- “I think that if for those of us lucky enough to be lawyers, I think we are expected to be able to do good for humanity. And I’m just trying to do my part.” – Damien Riehl (43:42-43:48)
- “My friend Casey Flaherty says that we as lawyers do a lot of thinking and we do a lot of thunking. And maybe AI can take care of a lot of the thunking that we don’t want to do the drudgery.” – Damien Riehl (46:05-46:13)
- “It’s not your melody. It’s not my melody. We’re actually just pulling from the same corpus of already existing melodies. So let’s just make music and stop suing each other.” – Damien Riehl (38:05-38:15)
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