Why I Chose To Enter the Arena To Transform the $1 Trillion Legal Industry With Augmented Intelligence
How do you transform a $1 trillion industry that has largely remained untouched by true technological reinvention?
The how is simple: AI.
The why is more compelling.
Why try to change the world or any given industry? The question that begged a solution ignited a spark in me I had felt only a few times over the course of my 20+ year career. Those times I was on fire with an idea—and was able to take it through development and execution to sales and customer relations, all the way to realizing the outcome—were the ones I felt most engaged, motivated, and filled with purpose beyond a pay day.
The why (and that feeling) ties back to that quote by President Theodore Roosevelt about being the “man in the arena” daring greatly. I wanted to be in the arena to do meaningful work that offered profoundly disruptive solutions—and AI is at the frontier. It’s why I connected deeply with Eudia’s mission to fix what's broken in the existing legal industry. Eudia is transforming the role of legal departments in Fortune 500 companies with its Augmented Intelligence Platform.
Eudia’s Augmented Intelligence Platform aims to elevate legal teams from bottleneck to business drivers with collaboratively built AI. Its goal is audacious: to inject transformative innovation into a $1 trillion legal industry by becoming the AI partner for the corporate legal function. For me, it’s a chance to be part of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine how legal teams operate, not just by making them more efficient, but by elevating their role as a strategic driver of business value.
The opportunity: Shape the future, don’t let it shape you
During my time advising leaders at companies of all sizes, I’ve learned that leaders have two choices during times of rapid change:
To take a reactive approach to change and adapt as their industry shifts around them, or to shape their future proactively and define how that transformation unfolds.
As a member of Eudia’s executive team, I can be in this arena shaping the future by creating a new playbook that combines my tech background and my experience in change management at McKinsey to drive change rather than react to it.
As AI accelerates the shift from legal-as-a-service to legal-as-a-platform, Chief Legal Officers also have an opportunity to lead a charge. Rather than simply react to AI’s impact, legal teams can architect their own blueprint for how AI-driven intelligence should work in highly sensitive, high-stakes environments where accuracy is non-negotiable.
At Eudia, we aren’t just building a legal AI product. We are building a platform that enables CLOs to take control of this transformation—on their terms.
A platform approach, not a point solution
Legal work is not just data processing—it requires judgment, creativity, and strategic thinking. Yet some of the work is routine, and frankly, menial. Most legal tech tools focused on the latter—built to solve narrow pain points without considering the full complexity of legal operations.
The result? Fragmented adoption, limited impact, and legal teams that remain stretched thin.
Throughout my years of experience, I’ve learned that only about a third of business transformations succeed. That’s why it’s exciting to be part of a solution with the potential to truly transform. That’s because Eudia is taking a different approach by augmenting human judgment, not replacing it.
Rather than solely focus on automation, Eudia is built around Augmented Intelligence that enhances human decision-making with AI, without removing lawyers from the process. Eudia’s AI agents are designed to empower legal professionals, allowing them to focus on the highest-value work while automating repetitive tasks.
A holistic legal strategy, not just software
Most legal software operates in silos. Eudia’s Augmented Intelligence platform is built to work across the entire legal function.
Enhance in-house efficiency by reducing the operational burden on corporate legal teams. Eudia’s Augmented Intelligence platform builds a ‘legal brain’ to unlock insights from siloed data and institutional knowledge.
Streamline routine legal work by providing CLOs with AI augmented legal services platform for routine and repetitive work.
This end-to-end approach ensures that AI adoption doesn’t happen in isolation—it happens in a way that delivers real business impact.
Eudia’s culture is baked into its solution
The other thing I’ve learned since completing my MBA at Wharton and spending time at multiple companies is that joining an organization isn’t just about the mission—it’s about the culture that enables people to execute at the highest level. I want to make it my life’s work to be in the arena with a team that operates with purpose to change the odds of success and go all in to drive transformations.
In my first three months at Eudia, I’ve seen firsthand how the company operates by constantly questioning assumptions and challenging conventional wisdom.
The values that stood out to me:
- First principles thinking: The best solutions don’t come from following playbooks. We are writing the playbook.
- Disagree and commit: The right answer is more important than whose answer it is. Eudia has a culture of intellectual rigor and decisive action.
- Customer obsession: Every decision is measured by real business impact for our CLO partners.
- Responsible AI: In legal, AI must meet a higher standard for accuracy, security, and trust—and Eudia is building with these principles at the core.
- GSD (Get Sh*t Done): Speed matters. Eudia moves at a pace that is uncommon in the legal industry—but essential for true transformation.
Building a transformative AI solution is only possible if it's backed by forward-thinking leadership that understands both the technology and the industry—and stays committed to these core values.
Eudia brings together deep AI expertise, legal industry insight, and operational excellence:
- Omar Haroun (CEO): A serial entrepreneur and former lawyer who deeply understands the legal function’s challenges.
- Ashish Agrawal (CTO): A pioneering AI leader with experience at Google, Amazon, and Cresta, specializing in search, NLP, and AI-driven automation.
- David Van Reyk (COO): A seasoned M&A and private equity expert, ensuring Eudia can scale rapidly while driving long-term industry partnerships.
Just as important as the leadership team is the caliber of customers and investors who are backing this vision. Eudia already counts some of the world’s most visionary Chief Legal Officers from the Fortune 500 as partners and the investors at General Catalyst who infused the growing company with $105M in Series A funding. Eudia has the resources and backing to build for the long term, not just the next quarter.
The Augmented Intelligence era is now
The transformation of corporate legal is no longer theoretical—it is happening now. And I want to ensure that transformation is as successful as possible. We’re building the movement at Eudia alongside the most forward-thinking CLOs. Together, we’re embracing this shift and setting the standard for the next decade, proving that AI is not a threat to legal teams—it is a force multiplier that enables them to operate at an entirely new level.
If you are thinking about how AI can enhance—not replace—your legal team, we’d love to talk.
The Augmented Intelligence era is underway. Let’s get in the arena and shape it together.