Ben McGuire, the former managing director of Simmons & Simmons Solutions, has joined legal tech build studio Purple as a venture partner. Purple was founded by Tim Pullan (former founder of ThoughtRiver) and Dom Conte (ex Gowling WLG lawyer), who have built a company that designs and builds custom AI-powered legal technology solutions that help generate income.

McGuire, who was also a partner at Simmons, helped the firm’s clients to develop the capabilities, skillsets and technology to build differentiated offerings.

Speaking to Legal IT Insider, McGuire praised the company that Pullan and Conte have built, observing: “Maybe the gap is that they haven’t run it inside a law firm. The gap I’m filling really is to be a venture partner, which essentially means helping law firms actually make products and services that they’ve built with us inside their context.”

Questions that he will help to address include “why should partners be interested in this? Where’s the money going to come from? How are you going to pay for it? What does the outlook look like? What does the operating model look like?” And he points out, “Because that’s basically what I did with Solutions for nearly a decade.” He will also be helping law firms to process questions including how to leverage time saved and reinvest it, “doing more profitable things than they were before.”…

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