John Nay & Mike Schmidtberger (Norm Ai): Venture-Backed BigLaw

What happens when the chair of one of the world's most successful law firms walks away from BigLaw to join a venture-backed AI law company? Mike Schmidtberger led Sidley Austin's Executive Committee for more than seven years. Now he's Chairman of Norm Law, an AI-native law firm built alongside Norm Ai, the legal and compliance AI company founded by John Nay and valued at more than $1 billion. Schmidtberger says he “failed retirement after 11 days.” We talk about out what they're building.

Nay and Schmidtberger join Joel and John to explain how a tech company and a law firm can be “as married as they're legally allowed to be.” Since most states bar nonlawyers from owning law firms, Norm Law is a separate partnership owned by its lawyers and tied to Norm Ai by contract, a cousin of the MSO structures private equity has used to buy into accounting. The hosts ask about how they use AI at every step of the legal practice, why they've abandoned the billable hour for per-document and per-transaction pricing, and what a firm looks like without the BigLaw partner model.

Guests: John Nay is the founder and CEO of Norm Ai. Mike Schmidtberger is Chairman of Norm Law and the former Chair of Sidley Austin's Executive Committee.