Greg Wildisen recounts his entrepreneurial journey of launching a business during a global pandemic.
From a young age, I grew up surrounded by entrepreneurism as both of my parents were small business owners. I remember sitting at the dinner table listening to business conversations about clients, employees and customer service – acting as my inspiration to become an entrepreneur. Little did I know that I would be launching and growing a legal tech business in the middle of a global pandemic.
Early years: Connecting business and legal
I formed my interest in legal technology from a combination of three main pillars. My business degree that had some computing elements to it, my degree in law at the University of Sydney and my first role as a paralegal in the litigation support department of Clayton Utz; an Australian law firm specialising in dispute resolution. This is where I first saw the blend of legal processes and technology that inspired me. There weren’t many law firms at that time that had a capability for in-house legal tech, and the role was about providing lawyers technology support with how they delivered their cases.
Early on I observed how law firms could benefit from technology to make finding documents to support their legal cases more efficient. At that time, they were creating lists in DOS based ‘WordPerfect’ making it hard if not impossible to quickly find documents. So, it was all about convincing them that databases would solve this problem for them.
Law firms were skeptical about applying technology to their work, and I remember there was one prospective customer who was literally jumping for joy around a boardroom when we showed them how easy it was to locate specific documents using eDiscovery tools – the process of identifying, collecting and producing electronically stored information (ESI) in response to a request or production in a lawsuit or investigation. This is what fueled my ambition to build a company that connects business and legal.
With so many technologies evolving over time they aren’t all specifically designed for the legal world; however, I saw that with the right application they can be game changers for the legal industry. In my 25+ years of working with technology in legal, there is no doubt that GenAI is by far the biggest game changer that has come along. AI adoption in the legal sector has jumped from 19% to 79% in 2024, according to the 9th edition of the Legal Trends Report.
My legal tech background and entrepreneurial mindset led me to form Panoram, a GenAI software specialist for business and legal, in conjunction with my two co-founders Rick Seabrook and Chris Olofson. We all met while working at a global technology-enabled legal services provider. Rick was formerly an Accenture partner who was inspired by what eDiscovery and legal tech could do prior to joining the company. Chris was a C-Level Executive with specialist knowledge of the product side of the business.
Pivoting in COVID-19 to accelerate business growth
Our initial focus at Panoram was to build an Enterprise Legal Platform over Microsoft 365 starting with Contract Lifecycle Management. Two weeks after we started COVID-19 reared its ugly head. It was a very strange time trying to build a team and recruit employees in the middle of a global pandemic. When COVID-19 first hit, people on the whole were focused on just staying safe and not looking for new jobs.
As the majority of technology at that time was geared to health and safety not legal, the pandemic led us to pivot towards becoming a professional services business. We started with core services, deploying technology into corporate legal departments and providing eDiscovery services to law firms. Shortly after we became involved in large eDiscovery projects that accelerated the growth of the company.
Recent times: The impact of GenAI on legal tech
Generative AI (GenAI) has created a ‘Professional Revolution,’ and no profession is affected more than legal because GenAI is all about words and context; and words are the tool of all lawyers. For example, in 5 years’ time no one will be performing manual document review and mundane legal tasks will be a thing of the past. So now, law firms and corporate legal departments are redefining and redesigning how they deliver their expertise, creating a demand for GenAI products and services.
We see GenAI bifurcating into the world of AI agents and bots aimed at making the end user an-hour-a-day more efficient. However, we believe that this has significant limitations, and the benefits don’t really move the needle, whereas Panoram focuses on AI at scale because that’s where real disruption occurs, and GenAI creates tangible business outcomes and added value.
At Panoram we have invested heavily in research and development allowing the company to gain an early mover advantage in the GenAI space. We have built a multi-model GenAI document review and data analysis platform to transform, not just speed up, document review at scale, for eDiscovery, due diligence and cyber breach processes. As an entrepreneur, it has never been more exciting to be involved in legal tech than right now.
The immediate focus of the business is on the UK market, but Panoram can service the needs of clients in multiple jurisdictions, supporting our future strategy of establishing a footprint in other key overseas territories.
