Between the Briefs

An $800,000 dispute over a self-drafted contract sounds…completely avoidable. And, for a business litigator, the kind of frustrating case they could do without. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Kai Jacobs, Partner at South Florida Business Law Group, to discuss how 33 years of practicing law have shaped his approach to litigation, client counseling, and preventative legal work. Plus, they break down what happens when clients bring AI-drafted agreements into a law firm, why Kai prefers pre-lawsuit mediation over arbitration, and how broken business rela...

Real trial work starts long before anyone stands in front of a jury.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Gerardo “Jerry” Alcazar, trial lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, for a practical and candid conversation on high-stakes litigation, trial preparation, team leadership, client management, courtroom presence, and the future of associate development in the tricky age of AI.What You'll Learn:Why high-stakes trials are won through preparation, not courtroom performanceHow Jerry learned trial skills in Big Law without endless trial opportunitiesWhy lawyers need to b...

 AI can give you an answer in seconds but that doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Patrick Baker, law professor at University of Tennessee at Martin and Founder of Baker Law Firm, for a practical conversation on legal education, AI, critical thinking, law school reform and what it really means to think like a lawyer.Plus, Patrick’s hottest take: AI is built to please you and lawyers would do well to remember that AI is buil...

Brian Amero became a naturalized American citizen in 2001. By 2007, he was an elected Superior Court judge in Georgia. Over nearly two decades on the bench, he set out to find better answers than incarceration for problems that jail was never going to solve.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Brian, a former Chief Superior Court Judge in Georgia and now Litigation Counsel at Bennett International Group, for a candid conversation about criminal justice reform, mental illness in local jails, access to justice and what a judge can...

AI is not a strategy. Sure, it’s a powerful tool but still, only one piece of the puzzle.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with John Koss, Chief Innovation and AI Officer at Mintz, for a practical conversation on legal AI, innovation strategy, knowledge management, law firm data, legal education, vendor relationships and what it actually takes to make new technology useful inside a law firm.What You’ll Learn:Why John sees innovation as much broader than AIHow people, proce...

Maxwell Weiss has investigated everything from stolen historical artifacts and match fixing to counterfeit medicines, privacy violations and questionable health plans. Now, he is working at the intersection of plaintiff-side litigation and AI-powered case discovery. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Maxwell Weiss, a partner at Don Bivens and Litigation Counsel at Darrow AI, to unpack how lawyers can find the facts that actually matter, investigate complex wrongdoing and use technology to uncover cases that traditional methods may never reach. Maxwell explains the 80/20 rule he applies to l...

75+ episodes. 1,200+ followers. A new look. A bottle of hot sauce. And a legal industry that is changing faster than most people can keep up with.In this special episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, hosts Joe Stephens and Adrian Cea record live from ILTACON 2026 to reflect on the conversations, guests, hot takes and recurring themes that have shaped the show so far.Join them as they revisit standout guests including Elaine Barsom, Colin Levy, Eric Friedman, Andrew Finkelstein, Matthew Pringle, Bob Simon, Katie DeBorde, and others, while also introducing the show’s new Hot Takes ho...

Personal injury law has a lot of big promises, big ads and big firms. Nicole Brenecki is more interested in what actually works.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Nicole, Founding Partner at Jodré Brenecki LLP, for a candid conversation on personal injury litigation, boutique firm strategy, client service, New York court delays, fraud scrutiny, AI and why efficiency matters more than size.What You’ll Learn:Why firm size can become a marketing gimmick when service breaks downWhy Nicole’s firm files suit on most...

Paralegals are the people attorneys rely on when deadlines are tight, documents are moving fast and the work needs to get done right.But they’re often treated as background support.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Christina Carter, Senior Manager of Firm-Wide Paralegal Management at Venable, for a practical conversation on paralegal leadership, legal operations, team culture, generational dynamics, AI adoption and what law firms often miss about the people who keep the work moving.What You’ll Learn:Why paralegal management shou...

Litigation does not begin when a lawsuit is filed. By then, the story has often already been written in contracts, emails, missed deadlines and the very human decision to wait because “maybe it’ll blow over.”In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Kat Mateo, Counsel of Litigation at Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP, for a practical, lively conversation about what clients, founders, business owners and legal teams often misunderstand about litigation.What You’ll Learn:Why clients should involve attorneys before disputes escalateHow litigators can spot...

Leadership in law is often treated like something that comes after the promotion, after the title or after someone hands you a team and assumes you magically know what to do with them.Nicole Lester Arrindell sees it differently. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Nicole, Head of State Regulatory and Legislative Affairs and Associate General Counsel at Equitable, for a wide-ranging conversation on servant leadership, legal education, public service, in-house counsel, mentorship, and what it actually means to lead in the legal profession.What...

Everyone claims AI will revolutionize legal, but Kara Peterson and Richard DiBona want to fix the systemic bottlenecks that have broken the system for decades.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Kara and Richard, cofounders of Descrybe, an AI company focused on making the law easier to find, understand, and verify. Their story began during the pandemic, when a personal legal issue pushed them into the frustrating reality of trying to understand and access the law as nonlawyers. That experience became the starting point for a platform...

A few months ago, people were asking whether not using AI could ever be malpractice. Now, that question feels a lot less theoretical.In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Shannon Boettjer, partner at Jaspan Schlesinger Narendran LLP, for a sharp, practical conversation on AI governance, legal risk, and what it means to build defensible systems before technology decisions turn into lawsuits.What You’ll Learn:Why the AI conversation shifted from “should we use it?” to “how do we use it responsibly?”How the knife vs. kitchen an...

Everyone wants AI to make legal cheaper. But what if that’s the wrong promise?In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Tim Fox, Chief Data and AI Officer at Ogletree Deakins, for a sharp, practical conversation on what AI adoption really looks like when you are trying to scale it across a large law firm.What You’ll Learn:Why build vs. buy is rarely as simple as “building is cheaper”How internal tools create long-term support, maintenance and upgrade costsWhy legal is not a rational economic actor wh...

Legal AI has no shortage of promises. Now, the real challenge is figuring out which ones are worth adopting. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Colin Levy, General Counsel at Malbek, legal tech author, and educator, to discuss how lawyers can adopt AI thoughtfully without sacrificing professional judgment.What You’ll Learn:Why the biggest obstacle to AI adoption is often lawyer mindset, not the technology itselfHow to distinguish meaningful AI capabilities from legal tech marketing hypeWhy testing AI with real legal workflows is more valuable than watching po...

Everyone wants an AI strategy but far fewer companies are ready to actually use one.In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Elaine Barsoom, AI and innovation leader and Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry, for a grounded and practical conversation on what it really takes to turn AI ambition into measurable business outcomes.What You’ll Learn:Why most AI efforts fail because of readiness, not technologyHow to identify where repetitive work, trapped knowledge and overloaded judgment are slowing teams downWhy “go slow to go fast” means doing the work in the right...

Before eDiscovery had a name, George Socha was already asking the questions most of the legal industry had not caught up to yet.In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal and co-founder of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), for a wide-ranging conversation on how legal technology has evolved from floppy disks and early matter management systems to GenAI, agentic tools and AI-powered discovery workflows.What You’ll Learn:Why eDiscovery became an industry standard through collaboration, timing and free accessWhy li...

Law firms have, historically, struggled with change. In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Umair Muhajir, Vice President and Global Head of Managed Review at DISCO, for a sharp, honest conversation about what GenAI is really doing to litigation workflows.His view is clear: GenAI is not simply making old workflows faster. At its best, it is forcing the industry to ask whether those workflows still make any sense. What You’ll Learn:Why GenAI replaces first-level document review work, not lawyers themselvesHow AI-powered review can deliver high precision and recall whi...

Paralegals have long been boxed into the role of “document reviewers” but their true value goes far beyond that. And with AI in the mix, their place in law firms is being rewritten entirely. In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Michelle Pendleton, Certified Paralegal and eDiscovery specialist at Allen Matkins and President of the San Diego Paralegal Association, to explore how paralegals are quietly becoming the most valuable players in law firms.What You’ll Learn:How to navigate the paralegal profession's shifting identityHow to structure case management from intake to tri...

The impact of AI on law has been studied through the narrow lens of productivity and profitability. But the reality is much broader than that. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome back Daniel Schwarcz, Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School to discuss groundbreaking empirical research on how AI impacts lawyer performance, legal reasoning and long-term professional development.What You’ll Learn:How to move beyond benchmarking studies to measure what actually mattersWhy reasoning models and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) platforms deliver measurable improvementsThe counterintuitive finding that using AI for re...