Adam J. Schwartz Podcast Transcript
Adam J. Schwartz joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Adam J. Schwartz. Adam J. Schwartz, Esquire, is the founder and CEO of DocumentReview.law, the attorney-built platform reimagining document review through practical, intuitive AI designed exclusively for legal professionals. Inspired by his own experience managing document-intensive matters, Adam recognized the need for a faster, more affordable approach to document review.
When he couldn’t find a solution that met the needs of practicing attorneys, he taught himself JavaScript and built the first version of DocumentReview.law in his garage, refining it through real-world testing with fellow lawyers. Well, good afternoon, Adam. Welcome to the show.
Adam J. Schwartz: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate it. I know you’re based out of Los Angeles. I’m in Kansas City, so navigating calendars and time zones is always challenging, but I appreciate it so much. And Adam, if you don’t mind, we’ll jump right into your first question here.
Adam J. Schwartz: Sure.
Brian Thomas: You, you’ve had nearly two decades in law, from defending antitrust and securities fraud matters at a leading global firm in Washington, DC, to e-discovery consulting in Southern California.
What… Your, your origin story has a twist, though most attorneys don’t share. You taught yourself JavaScript and built the first working prototype of your document review app over the course of a year. What was the breaking point that made you decide to code your own solution rather than keeping it living with the tools that existed?
Adam J. Schwartz: Yeah, thanks. That’s a great question. To be perfectly honest, I, I had a case where I had a couple of hundred documents, and the existing document review tools that are out there are designed for massive cases with hundreds of thousands or millions of documents. And it not only would’ve been overkill for a case with just a couple hundred documents, but it would’ve been cost prohibitive for the client as well.
And, and I was just frustrated and I already knew a little JavaScript, and I had already built a Spanish-English vocab quiz app. I was taking Spanish at the time, and again, I couldn’t find an app I liked to practice vocab. So I thought, “Well, I’ll build, I’ll build it myself.” So I sat down in my converted garage in LA and, and s- and started tinkering with the JavaScript I know and learned as I went.
And it, it took about two years to get from the initial conceptualization stage to a prototype. And then I handed it off to a team of developers and they, they very kindly, chuckled and said, “You know you’re using code from, like, twenty-five years ago?” And I was like, “Well, that’s when I learned how to do this.”
So, so they turned it into a modern app that, that is able to function across browsers and platforms, and even devices. You can use it on your mobile phone. So it’s it’s come a long way from, from those early days where it, it was just, essentially a document viewer on a screen, on a black screen on my computer to, to, to a beautifully formed app today, so.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. I love the backstory. It’s just great, and sometimes that’s what happens. You see the light just goes on. You see a, a need or a gap there. Obviously you don’t wanna overspend on, on, a client or even charge a client for something that is not as big as the tool that was available at the time, and I just loved you jumping in and doing some JavaScript.
I mean, obviously you dabbled at first, but you got better and you ended up writing an app. But what I like is you went to the professionals later on and said, “Hey, this is working, but what do we need to do?” And, and now it’s supercharged, it’s platform agnostic, and it’s ready to roll for the masses.
So I appreciate that. Adam, you’ve said AI and law is both argumentative and disruptive, that while AI can enhance efficiency, the sensitivity of legal work still requires human review. Where exactly do you draw that line in document review, and how do you design AI that speeds attorneys up without tempting them to over trust it on the calls that really matter?
Adam J. Schwartz: Yeah, thanks. Cases are built on documents, and until AI is able to stand up in court and question witnesses and argue in front of the jury and argue with the judge as well it’s not going to be able b- to do the ultimate act. Or even until AI is ready to sit down in a settlement conference or at a mediation.
Lawyers still need to know the case inside and out, and you, and you do that by knowing the documents, because the documents are the case. And so when AI comes into play, typically on a doc review, you may have three or four sets of eyeballs, or even five or six sets of eyeballs looking at each document to make sure…
T- either to check for a particular area, or to make sure that nothing is missed. AI is able to eliminate those initial reviews and, and help triage the documents, find the important documents that you’re looking for i- in a faster fashion without having to go through as much chaff to get to the wheat.
But it’s still the human who has to take the documents and build the case a- and, and then present it either in a court or, or in a settlement or however the case is gonna resolve itself.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. A- and I thought it was interesting and, and I, I, I a hundred percent believe you there is until AI is ready to stand in court, make those arguments, lawyers will need to continue to be lawyers doing that…
preparing those documents doing that research and validating all that. And I know today, we talk about it on this podcast a lot, human in the loop is, is truly has gotta be… It doesn’t matter what you’re doing in your profession at the end of the day, humans need to ensure that the output is valid and sometimes a lot of hallucinations come out, and that creates issues, so I appreciate you highlighting that. And Adam- Also,
Adam J. Schwartz: I like to say- Go ahead. Go
Brian Thomas: ahead.
Adam J. Schwartz: I like to say trust but verify. You can trust AI, but you have to verify everything as well. A- and, and, and it’s a distinction. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s you can use it as a starting point, but to actually get to the finish line of anything, I think the human is still, y- very much a necessary component.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you. Adam, document review has historically been the black box of e-discovery life cycle, consuming roughly three-quarters of the total cost of discovery. For attorneys and clients who never understood why discovery is so expensive, what’s actually happening inside that black box, and how much of that cost do you believe AI can genuinely eliminate?
Adam J. Schwartz: Yeah, well, there’s two big factors that are driving that cost. One is the human element. Twenty or thirty lawyers maybe are literally putting in hundreds of hou-hours or, or a thousand hours or more over the course of, six to nine months, reviewing hundreds of thousands or millions of documents.
That just, Lawyers bill by the hour, and every one of those hours build up. The other big cost is vendor-associated costs. This is a lot of data we’re talking about, often terabytes of data, and storing it for a long time, so it’s accessible to the whole team on an instantaneous basis is still costly because server space is costly and, and so, what, w-what Document Review Law Dala tried to do is eliminate both.
You know, we brought in an AI to help cut down the number of hours, and we don’t have any documents stored. You store your own documents. And so we’ve tried to bring the fees down that way. But those are two– those are generally the two biggest drivers of cost in the e-discovery process.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. And I like your, the way your platform is. Obviously, you can reduce storage cost depending on your situation, but just using the platform to have access to those documents is obviously a, a way to cut those costs. But humans, or I should say lawyers, right, human lawyers- Yes.
are, are certainly expensive during that e-discovery co- period, so I, I really appreciate that. And then Adam, the last question of the day, you framed the central question as whether today’s AI tools are actually helping lawyers do their jobs better. As agentic AI and legal automation accelerate, where do you see document review and the broader practice of law heading over the next, let’s say, five, seven, ten years?
And what does attorney-built technology need to get right so that lawyers stay in control rather than getting swept along?
Adam J. Schwartz: Yeah attorneys and, and, and especially solo attorneys in small firms spend so much of their time on what would otherwise be called ministerial work if it weren’t being done necessarily by an attorney.
Instead of, the, the, the, the long and deep analysis that you need to do to build a case and the long and deep relationship that you need to build with your client in order to effectively represent them. And those are two things that humans are always gonna have to do. But, but I, I definitely see the AI coming in and handling a lot of the, what lawyers would say is busy work that, that, that we don’t necessarily wanna do so that we can spend more of our time, on the things that we’re actually supposed to be spending time on instead of what we actually spend our time on
Brian Thomas: Thank you. It’s, this is interesting. There’s I’d say a, a parallel here with healthcare. I’ve had a lot of CEOs like yourself in the healthcare space, whether they’re a physician or an executive, but they talk about this whole thing. The more we can leverage AI and, and do it right and make sure there’s the right guardrails in place, and have that human in the loop, they can spend more time with their patient.
And in your case here, same thing. We are always gonna need that human connection, that human-to-human relationship to manage that, and the more we can spend with the client, the better off the process will be for the client and for the attorney. So I appreciate that. And Adam, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Adam J. Schwartz: Thank you. It was wonderful to be here. I really appreciate it.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Adam J. Schwartz Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
