Ross Birbeck, Founder, Casedo
By Ross Birbeck, Founder of Casedo
2020 was an unprecedented year for everyone but especially the legaltech industry, with legal departments rapidly re-imagining their operations to embrace the digital era.
Fortunately, Casedo is in the business of change. Our ability to observe market trends and recognise growing expectations from legal practitioners placed us in a favourable position when the pandemic struck.
Before predicting what will change in 2021, let’s look back at Casedo’s highlights in 2020.
Webinars, seminars, and workshops
In early 2020, Ross and Milad wrapped up their ‘How to be a paperless lawyer’ seminar series at London’s top law schools. On the 10th February, they championed the legal profession’s digital revolution to law students at SOAS. On the 27th February, they visited UCL, encouraging students to stay ahead of the curve by getting to grips with the latest technical developments.
In April we were delighted to feature Rhys Taylor from the 36 Group in our weekly webinar series. Ross & Rhys explored Casedo’s practicalities for family practitioners at the Bar and offered exciting new features designed for family barristers.
We also hosted a student webinar where Gizem interviewed Ross on how a law student could make the most out of digital tools and especially Casedo.
More recently, Milad led a webinar on strategies for academic writing with the UCL Fintech Society, exploring how students can ace their dissertations & research-based projects with advanced technical skills.
Podcasts
Our founder and CEO, Ross, featured in two exciting podcasts in 2020. On the 18th November he spoke to Fintech: Byte-Sized about his journey as a legal tech pioneer and how his background as a video editor inspired Casedo.
On the 23rd November, he appeared on the Law Simplified podcast, discussing recent updates in lawtech and was put through his paces during a quick fire round on tax law.
Transforming the mooting landscape
We took our relationship with UCL to the next level in 2020, partnering with the UCL Law Society and sponsoring the Herbert Smith Freehills Junior Mooting Competition. Mooting was especially difficult in 2020, and we were thrilled to help transform the mooting landscape. Our student licenses assisted 239 aspiring lawyers work faster, smarter, and more innovatively. The competition operated solely on Casedo and we were honoured to have Lord Carnwath adjudicate the finals.
Congratulations again to Aishwarya Shaji on her success as a finalist. Be sure to check out her interview with Milad as shares her experience mooting paperlessly during a challenging year.
Sponsoring UCL Fintech Society
In September 2020 we kicked off the academic year with an exciting new sponsorship. The UCL Fintech Society is the largest of its kind in Europe, and we have collaborated with them on events and panels to demonstrate Casedo’s practicalities beyond the legal world. On 30th November, Ross showcased Casedo at their Adapt LegalTech Conference. We look forward to future events in 2021.
London Legal walk
On the 5th October, the Casedo team participated in the annual London Legal Walk, raising money for London’s free legal advice charities. Taking part in this year’s 10km challenge was particularly important for us as the need for free legal advice services has increased, and the global crisis continues to disproportionately impact the disadvantaged and vulnerable. Due to social distancing complications, we all got involved in our own safe ways. It was great to share our passion for free legal advice with 4,500 other participants, raising a whopping £530,000!
Casedo development
The disruption in 2020 allowed us to devote more time to engagement with the Casedo Community to enhance Casedo and its functionality. We are indebted to our users for their insight and ideas. Over the course of the year, we released six updates of casedo each boasting new features ranging from optical character recognition and go to page, to table of contents generation and increased speed. The most up to date version, Casedo v1.5, is 120% faster at importing documents, 50% faster at scrolling and switching between documents and 30% faster at searching. You can read more about the evolution of Casedo here. You will be glad to know that we are working on another update and look forward to launching this in 2021.
