00:00:00 – 00:00:09 Nitin Bajaj

Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Rathnakumar Udayakumar. RK, welcome on the show.

00:00:11 – 00:00:20 RK

It’s such a delight to be a part of the show, Nitin. I’ve been following the show for a while, and being a part of the show is it’s one thing off the bucket list now.

00:00:22 – 00:00:28 Nitin Bajaj

Well, it took us a bit to get you here, but here we are. I’m excited. Let’s start with: who is RK?

00:00:29 – 00:00:37 RK

Ah. Author, entrepreneur, data nerd, and an angel. So a lot of things, right? An amalgam of all of these.

00:00:39 – 00:00:54 Nitin Bajaj

That’s really cool. I am looking for us to learn more about each of those hats you wear in the next few minutes. Let’s start with: what is Legalyti, and more important to me is, why did you start it?

00:00:56 – 00:01:09 RK

See, Legalyti is the largest platform, or largest ecosystem, of AI-native law firms. And and the reason it started is interesting, right?

00:01:09 – 00:01:33 RK

Being to the — being in the U.S. for the last 10 years, and being through the wave of being a student, entrepreneur, working professional, and everything. And a lot of these days, or a lot of these — during this journey, I’d been, or I had been asked to work with lawyers, or been introduced to a few lawyers, and been taking help from a lot of lawyers. But it was never an easy journey for me.

00:01:33 – 00:01:56 RK

Like, hey, figuring out one, how to work with the — work with them, did I find the right one or not. So that sort of was always there. And being also running a community where a lot of people are asking for this help, just led to me thinking, hey, why can’t we be able to provide this service in a much better, scaled-up version? And that it all started with that.

00:01:57 – 00:02:14 Nitin Bajaj

Now, I know you’re really just about getting started, but give us a sense of, in these very short few weeks and months that Legalyti has been around, what kind of impact you’ve been able to create.

00:02:15 – 00:02:29 RK

I think it has done phenomenally well than what we thought it should. Being very precise, it’s been almost 100 days since we launched. Just shy of 100 days. I think by the time we upload the interview, we’ll be at about 100 days.

00:02:30 – 00:02:38 RK

In 100 days, keeping the financial goals away, we have done phenomenally well in the numbers. I don’t want to even dwell onto it. It’s the impact, right?

00:02:38 – 00:02:57 RK

Let me give you an example. There are a couple of law firms that are using us, and when they got onboarded with us, they have a staff of about 12 people. As of today, they have 3 people doing the same work, where the load has increased by over 30%, but their output — also the speed at which they’re giving the output — has improved by over 6x.

00:02:59 – 00:03:10 RK

That’s the impact that Legalyti was able to make in the space, and we want to sort of cling onto it and be able to scale this and provide it across different sectors altogether.

00:03:11 – 00:03:31 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. And I can only think that this level of impact will continue to improve, increase exponentially, as you get more data points and as you go through the processes. The optimization will only — optimization and efficiencies will only grow.

00:03:33 – 00:03:55 RK

We’re also trying to learn from day to day, right? There are days where — this is a great analogy I keep using — that there are monkeys running the ATM. So we make sure the ATM is all fine, but you always know there are monkeys running the ATM. But as we delve deep into it, we keep learning every — you know, a lot of things every day, and it’s the small things that have profound impact.

00:03:55 – 00:04:03 RK

That’s the most interesting thing. It’s not — it’s not the big things. The big things are obvious because they’re right in front of you, on the face. It’s like, it’s a slap on your face.

00:04:03 – 00:04:27 RK

But the small things that you’ll sort of just handle with your left hand, like something as simple as having certain information collected at the time of onboarding, makes impact. Not in hours, but in — not even in hours or days, in weeks of time that would take for somebody to get filed. That is — these are all the things that are sort of having profound impact, like I said, in this space.

00:04:27 – 00:04:47 Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. That’s huge. Now, the legal system is obviously extremely complicated and highly regulated. But leaving that aside, if you had to call out the one big challenge you’re facing, what would that be?

00:04:49 – 00:05:14 RK

I think it’s the — it’s the — number one is the steep learning curve, but more than that is the ecosystem altogether. The amount of impact AI is having in this field, especially the native models, are able to evolve so much that technology is no more a barrier, and the landscape is moving at a pace where it doesn’t matter you are the Metas or the Googles of the world.

00:05:14 – 00:05:37 RK

Technology is scaled up and running so fast you don’t understand what you did last week and this week. The road — you know, having a roadmap projection makes absolutely no sense anymore. We don’t — we don’t do roadmaps anymore. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the product 4 weeks from now, because what we thought we should be doing in 18 months, we were already able to do it in 2 months.

00:05:37 – 00:05:50 RK

We were thinking, hey, what do I do from here on? I think that’s the biggest change that has happened, especially for smaller companies than the larger ones, right? Because there’s a trust factor, there are already existing legacy clients that are going to stick to you.

00:05:50 – 00:06:09 RK

But when you’re a startup, especially when you’re very early in the curve, you have to be extremely nimble that, hey, any small change that happens in the market, in the ecosystem, in the tech, you should be ready to go and adopt it, or else somebody is going to just run over you. I think that’s one thing that I keep on the back of my pockets at this point in time.

00:06:10 – 00:06:17 Nitin Bajaj

That is so true. Now, on the flip side, a challenge is come opportunities. What’s the one you’re most excited about?

00:06:18 – 00:06:42 RK

Again, technology. Like I said, whatever we are doing today, if, let’s say, 3 years ago, 2 years ago, it’s absolutely not possible. We cannot compete with the type of bandwidth technology the other competitors have in the market, where they’ve spent billions of dollars into something like this, which we were able to build in the last 6, 8 months, which has opened up the door.

00:06:42 – 00:06:52 RK

I think that is something that I’m very excited about, and that is something I’m very scared about, which means the next person has the same advantage of us. So which means you will always have to reinvent yourself.

00:06:54 – 00:07:22 Nitin Bajaj

That is so true and wise. Now, as we look forward into the future, I’d like to take this moment to pause and reflect. And I’d love to invite you to share 2 moments. One where things did not work out as you had expected. There was disappointment, failure, lessons that came out of it. And another instance where things exceeded your expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

00:07:25 – 00:08:04 RK

Wow. I think I’m going to go back to 2019, 2020. So I launched my startup, we raised a seed round of a couple of million dollars, and I got my HMB paid. And I’m very new to U.S., I don’t even know what is HMB. And then they said, hey, from here on, you cannot work on your startup because it becomes dual employment. And I’m like, what is dual employment? You’re working for a company and you’re running a startup at the same time. I’m like, oh, I’ve done that all my life. And they’re like, that’s not how it works anymore. And I’m like, hey, I’m not using my office time, it’s happening on my personal time. They were like, there’s nothing like that.

00:08:04 – 00:08:28 RK

I think that was my biggest, biggest disappointment in life because I had to step out of a company where I held more than 40, 45%, and we have raised a couple of million dollars, and you almost start thinking that’s a part of your life, right? And being able to pull it out of your system and be like, hey, I no more own it, was one of the most hardest pills to swallow.

00:08:29 – 00:09:12 RK

And something that worked onto my favor is Legalyti for that matter, because I’d always tried to work something on the legal space over the last couple of years, but with the evolution of AI, we were able to build something what should have taken us over 3 years. With a team of about 10 people, and the tech team is only like about 5, with 5 people, what we were able to pull off in the last 6 months, I don’t think it was ever possible. I think that is how I weigh it, right? And one of the — one of the biggest inspirations for Legalyti itself is my immigration challenge that happened very early, early in my life in the U.S. I think a part of the success also comes from the failure.

00:09:13 – 00:09:32 Nitin Bajaj

That is so true. And as you know, failure is just a stepping stone to the eventual success we are going to see. So kudos to you in the true entrepreneurial spirit. You took all of those lessons and those experiences, and you turned them around into an opportunity. That’s amazing. Now, switching gears —

00:09:32 – 00:09:33 RK

Coming from you is —

00:09:33 – 00:09:33 Nitin Bajaj

Right.

00:09:34 – 00:09:37 RK

Coming from you makes me feel very happy.

00:09:39 – 00:09:41 Nitin Bajaj

Now, switching gears, what do you do for fun?

00:09:43 – 00:09:59 RK

I love sports. I think I’m up for sports any day. I play pretty good golf, tennis, and cricket, but I’m a very boring guy. I would work 10 days a week if it’s possible. So if I could sneak in, I would always love to play some sport.

00:09:59 – 00:10:12 Nitin Bajaj

I know you well enough. You’re pretty good at sports, but you’re not boring at all. I know you would work 23 hours a day if that was humanly possible, and I know you have done that in the past, but I wouldn’t qualify you as boring.

00:10:14 – 00:10:17 RK

We cut out of the same cloth. We are not supposed to call each other boring.

00:10:19 – 00:10:25 Nitin Bajaj

So true. Now, is there a book or a podcast that is a favorite and you want to share with the audience?

00:10:27 – 00:10:42 RK

There’s a book called The Secret. That’s one of my favorite. I think I would always recommend it to anybody. But just as an add-on, there’s another book called Outliers. That’s another favorite book of mine. You know, both of them, like, almost are there with me all the time.

00:10:44 – 00:10:45 Nitin Bajaj

Good call.

00:10:45 – 00:10:48 RK

So that is — those 2, I would suggest any day.

00:10:50 – 00:10:58 Nitin Bajaj

Now, onto my favorite part of the show. RK, we call this the one-line life lessons. I’d love for you to share your life lessons with us.

00:11:01 – 00:11:20 RK

One-line life lessons. I think there’s this — this was a quote from one of the golfers: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” I think that’s one. And pressure is privilege. I think I sort of tweeted it a couple of days ago as well.

00:11:20 – 00:11:38 RK

I think — and that’s one of my favorite. And success shouldn’t go to your head, and failure shouldn’t go to your heart. I can go on and on, but these 3 probably are my most favorite ones because I keep reminding myself about them whenever I could get a chance.

00:11:39 – 00:12:05 Nitin Bajaj

Love all of those. RK, thank you so much for making the time to share your journey, your story, your life lessons. And I’m super excited about what you’re building with Legalyti. Congratulations on all of the successes in such a short time, and I know you’re just getting started. So I’m really excited at what the near future has in store for us.

00:12:06 – 00:12:44 RK

Thanks for your kind words. And you had been a part of this journey yourself, and you had been a sounding board a lot of times. You know, I had always called you a brother, and the number of days I’ve called you for advice, I think people like you made a journey like this a more enjoyable one. Because, like I said, right, pressure is privilege. You are one of those persons who has lived through it. And — and thanks for inviting me to the podcast. And this was one of the shows I always was like, oh, hey, I want to hear it.

00:12:45 – 00:13:01 RK

Now, being able to be a part of it is — is, like I said, it’s a privilege at this point. I’m telling you that. It’s a privilege. And thanks for having me here. This not just made my day, month, or year, it’s like, it’s a moment to cherish forever. Thank you so much.

00:13:02 – 00:13:16 Nitin Bajaj

Well, like you said, we are cut out from the same cloth, and I enjoy the time we spent together. And I’m genuinely excited about what you’re building and looking forward to many, many more such times together.

00:13:17 – 00:13:27 RK

Thank you so much, Nitin. And I know when you use the word genuinely how much deep it means to you. And I am genuinely happy being a part of the show. Thanks.