August 14, 2025 • 7 mins
I spoke with Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Bruno Belcastro Pinto, the CEO and Senior Product Leader, respectively, at Definely, an AI-powered productivity suite for contract drafting and review, during the 2025 International Legal Technology Association Conference. In this second part of our interview, we discussed the growth of the legal technology sector, how the company is integrating its release of Cascade during ILTACON into its portfolio of tools, and the way technology is affecting the practice of law.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan at ELT Con2025, speaking with Nam d Emily.
(00:21):
Fun, w and Bruno.
Be Castro, Pinto, CEO, and seniorproduct leader, respectively at
divinely in AI powered productivitysuite for contract drafting and review.
Nam d Bruno, it's wonderful to see youguys for part two of our conversation.
It's great to be back, Harry.
Thanks for having us.
Nnamdi, how has Definely been able toreach its growth milestones so far?
(00:46):
We've been focused on justbuilding, the best products
solving problems for our lawyers.
We focus on highly complextransactional documents.
I was a former lawyer, so I know theproblem that we're trying to solve,
and working with, my team and, ourend users, we've just been focused
on building really, beautifullydesigned intuitive products.
(01:09):
A company when you strip it allback, is just a collection of
individuals trying to achieve a goal.
And part of the goal that we're tryingto do is build incredible products that
offers real value to our customers.
As long as we keep doing that, wewill keep the light in our customers,
we'll keep winning new customers andthat will allow us to naturally grow.
But also bringing togetheran incredible team.
I've been so lucky to have a veryexperienced and very skilled team
(01:31):
around me which has, really helped us.
It's a combination of, havingthe right team and building the
right solutions to solve theproblems that you're trying to do.
Speaking of products, Bruno, tofinally launched Cascade at Elcon.
What questions have come up in your demos?
We launched cascade yesterday.
It's been amazing to see thereaction lots of interest.
(01:51):
People have been really curious onhow they can integrate this within
their workflows which is reallygood because we live in Word where
lawyers are most of their time.
We've seen a lot of seamless workflowintegration as well with enhance and
with the rest of our suite, which issomething that we're constantly evolving,
and we'll be doing a lot of work inthe next few months bringing everything
(02:12):
together as one unified product that canmeet you where you are most of the time.
Nadi, what skills are most importantfor your team members as you grow?
Putting together acompany is, quite simple.
You find highly skilled people thathave an expertise and experience in
whatever it is you're looking for, andyou have to go through a process to find
(02:34):
those people, but once you found thosepeople, you get out of their way and
let them do what you hide them to do.
So we are a tech company.
We're always looking for the bestengineers, the best product managers,
the best, data scientists, but we're alsolooking for salespeople to help us sell
the products, customer success because wespeak to our customers every day and we
wanna make sure that they're, loving theproduct as well as the service that we're
(02:55):
giving to them, marketing to help us withour exposure and promoting our brand.
There are a lot of different facets toa company and it's all about finding
those people who have the relevantskillset to help you with your ambitions.
Bruno, tell us about the technologyon which Cascade is built.
Our product is leveraging a lot ofthe work that we've done through
(03:15):
the years with our draft product.
Really understanding the logic withinthe contract like the definitions,
clauses, everything that's reallycomplex within a legal document.
On top of that, we're leveragingall of our advancements on ai.
I recently announced agen Frameworkas well, and we used a lot of
models like word model agnostic.
So we look at the best model for thebest task and we combine that with our
(03:39):
technology that we build throughoutthe years to offer that third level
leap down analysis of any potentialknock on effects of any changes.
We're also using our enhancedproduct to be able to interrogate
what are the affected locationswithin any change on the contract.
Namby, what are the Ilta Con 2025activities that have had the most
(04:01):
impact for DEF Divinely so far?
ILTA Con this year has justbeen incredible for us.
This is the first time we'veactually booked a private suite.
So what we've done is that we've hireda private room where we can bring our
customers and, potential customersto see , a demo of our products in a
space that's a little bit more quiet.
They can really spend time tohave an informed conversation
and discussion with them.
(04:21):
And that has been really.
Valuable to us.
Bruno.
What are the challenges of.
Adapting technology to arapidly changing tech landscape.
There are definitely challenges, butthere's also lots of opportunities
like our product team, our engineeringteam, feel like kids in a candy
store where all of the technologyadvancements are like AI, machine
(04:42):
learning, large language models.
There's many things that arepossible nowadays that were not
possible even six months ago.
We're only seeing more thingscoming in the next few months.
We just got GPT five release notlong ago, which is very good.
We're already trying it and we're seeingimprovements in the tasks that we do
and the tools that we have right now.
In terms of challenges, getting accessto the latest models is a challenge for
(05:07):
everyone, but we work closely with allthe frontier models and we have access to
them as soon as they're available to us.
In general, in the industry data centercapacity and the fact that these models
consume a lot of energy and the actualproviders of data centers can actually
cope with the level of demand that'shappening right now in the market, is
(05:27):
one of the main challenges at the moment.
Nadi, what changes in the practiceof law do you see driving interest in
technology like finally going forward?
The technology is just alot more readily available.
Some of this technologywasn't available when.
I started the company so there'sbeen a lot of innovation and a
lot of technological advances overthe last few years that has just
made it a lot more practical forlawyers to embrace technology.
(05:51):
As has been probably.
The case over the last few years hasbeen a lot more interest from their
clients who are asking for thesetechnologies because everyone sees it now.
I see generative AI as tablestakes . Everyone is expected
to be utilizing technology to,work in a more efficient way.
And I think that sort of pressure iscoming from, clients of these law firms.
As a result of that, they're having toadjust to their client demand as well.
(06:13):
Also internally you're seeing lawfirms who are more open to wanting to
find more efficient ways to delivertheir services to their clients to
return more value to their clientsand also to their people as well.
They want their, lawyers to havetheir best technologies and the
best solutions available to them.
So I think you have a culminationof different things that are
just creating this perfect storm.
And it's a really exciting time foranybody in this space to be involved.
(06:36):
This is Ari Kaplan at TicCon 2025, speaking with Nam D
Emily fw and Bruno Bel Castro.
Pinto, CEO, and senior product leader,respectively at divinely an AI powered
productivity suite for contractdrafting and review Nam D at Bruno.
Really a privilege.
Thank you so very much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
(06:59):
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan at ELT Con2025, speaking with Nam d Emily.
(00:21):
Fun, w and Bruno.
Be Castro, Pinto, CEO, and seniorproduct leader, respectively at
divinely in AI powered productivitysuite for contract drafting and review.
Nam d Bruno, it's wonderful to see youguys for part two of our conversation.
It's great to be back, Harry.
Thanks for having us.
Nnamdi, how has Definely been able toreach its growth milestones so far?
(00:46):
We've been focused on justbuilding, the best products
solving problems for our lawyers.
We focus on highly complextransactional documents.
I was a former lawyer, so I know theproblem that we're trying to solve,
and working with, my team and, ourend users, we've just been focused
on building really, beautifullydesigned intuitive products.
(01:09):
A company when you strip it allback, is just a collection of
individuals trying to achieve a goal.
And part of the goal that we're tryingto do is build incredible products that
offers real value to our customers.
As long as we keep doing that, wewill keep the light in our customers,
we'll keep winning new customers andthat will allow us to naturally grow.
But also bringing togetheran incredible team.
I've been so lucky to have a veryexperienced and very skilled team
(01:31):
around me which has, really helped us.
It's a combination of, havingthe right team and building the
right solutions to solve theproblems that you're trying to do.
Speaking of products, Bruno, tofinally launched Cascade at Elcon.
What questions have come up in your demos?
We launched cascade yesterday.
It's been amazing to see thereaction lots of interest.
(01:51):
People have been really curious onhow they can integrate this within
their workflows which is reallygood because we live in Word where
lawyers are most of their time.
We've seen a lot of seamless workflowintegration as well with enhance and
with the rest of our suite, which issomething that we're constantly evolving,
and we'll be doing a lot of work inthe next few months bringing everything
(02:12):
together as one unified product that canmeet you where you are most of the time.
Nadi, what skills are most importantfor your team members as you grow?
Putting together acompany is, quite simple.
You find highly skilled people thathave an expertise and experience in
whatever it is you're looking for, andyou have to go through a process to find
(02:34):
those people, but once you found thosepeople, you get out of their way and
let them do what you hide them to do.
So we are a tech company.
We're always looking for the bestengineers, the best product managers,
the best, data scientists, but we're alsolooking for salespeople to help us sell
the products, customer success because wespeak to our customers every day and we
wanna make sure that they're, loving theproduct as well as the service that we're
(02:55):
giving to them, marketing to help us withour exposure and promoting our brand.
There are a lot of different facets toa company and it's all about finding
those people who have the relevantskillset to help you with your ambitions.
Bruno, tell us about the technologyon which Cascade is built.
Our product is leveraging a lot ofthe work that we've done through
(03:15):
the years with our draft product.
Really understanding the logic withinthe contract like the definitions,
clauses, everything that's reallycomplex within a legal document.
On top of that, we're leveragingall of our advancements on ai.
I recently announced agen Frameworkas well, and we used a lot of
models like word model agnostic.
So we look at the best model for thebest task and we combine that with our
(03:39):
technology that we build throughoutthe years to offer that third level
leap down analysis of any potentialknock on effects of any changes.
We're also using our enhancedproduct to be able to interrogate
what are the affected locationswithin any change on the contract.
Namby, what are the Ilta Con 2025activities that have had the most
(04:01):
impact for DEF Divinely so far?
ILTA Con this year has justbeen incredible for us.
This is the first time we'veactually booked a private suite.
So what we've done is that we've hireda private room where we can bring our
customers and, potential customersto see , a demo of our products in a
space that's a little bit more quiet.
They can really spend time tohave an informed conversation
and discussion with them.
(04:21):
And that has been really.
Valuable to us.
Bruno.
What are the challenges of.
Adapting technology to arapidly changing tech landscape.
There are definitely challenges, butthere's also lots of opportunities
like our product team, our engineeringteam, feel like kids in a candy
store where all of the technologyadvancements are like AI, machine
(04:42):
learning, large language models.
There's many things that arepossible nowadays that were not
possible even six months ago.
We're only seeing more thingscoming in the next few months.
We just got GPT five release notlong ago, which is very good.
We're already trying it and we're seeingimprovements in the tasks that we do
and the tools that we have right now.
In terms of challenges, getting accessto the latest models is a challenge for
(05:07):
everyone, but we work closely with allthe frontier models and we have access to
them as soon as they're available to us.
In general, in the industry data centercapacity and the fact that these models
consume a lot of energy and the actualproviders of data centers can actually
cope with the level of demand that'shappening right now in the market, is
(05:27):
one of the main challenges at the moment.
Nadi, what changes in the practiceof law do you see driving interest in
technology like finally going forward?
The technology is just alot more readily available.
Some of this technologywasn't available when.
I started the company so there'sbeen a lot of innovation and a
lot of technological advances overthe last few years that has just
made it a lot more practical forlawyers to embrace technology.
(05:51):
As has been probably.
The case over the last few years hasbeen a lot more interest from their
clients who are asking for thesetechnologies because everyone sees it now.
I see generative AI as tablestakes . Everyone is expected
to be utilizing technology to,work in a more efficient way.
And I think that sort of pressure iscoming from, clients of these law firms.
As a result of that, they're having toadjust to their client demand as well.
(06:13):
Also internally you're seeing lawfirms who are more open to wanting to
find more efficient ways to delivertheir services to their clients to
return more value to their clientsand also to their people as well.
They want their, lawyers to havetheir best technologies and the
best solutions available to them.
So I think you have a culminationof different things that are
just creating this perfect storm.
And it's a really exciting time foranybody in this space to be involved.
(06:36):
This is Ari Kaplan at TicCon 2025, speaking with Nam D
Emily fw and Bruno Bel Castro.
Pinto, CEO, and senior product leader,respectively at divinely an AI powered
productivity suite for contractdrafting and review Nam D at Bruno.
Really a privilege.
Thank you so very much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
(06:59):
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
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