Summary

In Episode 10 of the AAAi Podcast, Clearbrief Founder and CEO Jacqueline Schafer returns—not just as a guest, but as a strategic partner to the American Arbitration Association^® (AAA^®). What began as a conversation during Episode 3 evolved into a real-world collaboration that’s reshaping how arbitrators work. This episode offers a firsthand look at how ideas turn into impact and how innovation, when grounded in trust and utility, can transform an industry.

Key Takeaways

1. The Podcast Was the Pilot

One year ago, Jacqueline Schafer joined the AAAi Podcast to discuss Clearbrief’s vision. Today, Clearbrief is a strategic partner to the AAA. That evolution—from early-stage insight to essential infrastructure—reflects how the AAA uses this platform not just to highlight trends, but to explore and act on them. The AAAi Podcast serves to highlight new industry ideas and provide a window into the organization's commitment to real-time innovation.

2. From Skeptics to Superusers 

Clearbrief didn’t expect immediate buy-in. Instead, the team designed with purpose—embedding directly within Word to align with how arbitrators already work. Clickable citations, hyperlinked pleadings, and a clean, intuitive interface made the difference. As Jacqueline put it, “The quality of the arbitration award that you write is what's going to build your reputation in this industry.” 

The lesson: build tools that elevate professionals by meeting them where they are.

3. Redefining the Best

Today’s most in-demand arbitrators aren’t just experienced—they’re efficient, thoughtful, and tech-enabled. As Bridget McCormack noted, “If parties can select an arbitrator who uses Clearbrief to reduce drafting time and reallocate that time toward strategy and decision-making—why wouldn’t they?” In an environment where clarity and speed are increasingly valued, precision may matter more than pedigree.

Final Thought: A Podcast with Impact

This episode illustrates that legal innovation doesn’t have to be hypothetical. The partnership between Clearbrief and the AAA offers a model for how thoughtful tech adoption can empower professionals—and it all began with a single podcast conversation.

Watch Episode 10

Transcript

Below is the full transcript of Episode 10 of the AAAi Podcast.

Bridget McCormack: Welcome to the AAAI Podcast. I'm Bridget McCormick, the CEO and President of the American Arbitration Association. 

Zach Abramowitz: And I'm Zach Abramowitz, founder of Killer Whale Strategies and Investor in Disruptive Legal Startups. The AAAI Podcast tells the story of the American Arbitration Association's AI journey. We discuss emerging trends in artificial intelligence with movers and shakers inside AAA, as well as with key influencers in the broader legal AI ecosystem.

Zach Abramowitz: Been a year, we have one repeat guest from last year's Legal Week podcast. It's 

Bridget McCormack: the best guest ever. 

Zach Abramowitz: Best guest ever. But I think this is super exciting, looking back, over the course of a year, not just because, you know how much the AAA has done and how much Jackie has done. But the fact that you've done stuff together and that happened as a result of this podcast. And when we talked about why to create this podcast in the first place, obviously we did want to talk about AI. We wanted to be a resource on AI for the legal community, but it was also to give a peek behind the curtain of what was actually going on at the AAA and really build in public and It's cool. We found out in another interview that our podcast that we recorded in Boston with Colin Rule ended up leading to the new CMO of the AAA, getting interested in the job. You really are given a sense of what's going on at the company, but this podcast that we did record last year got the AAA introduced to Jackie in Clearbrief, and now a year later. You've been able to announce a major partnership with American Arbitration Association. So, this podcast is not just, taped and then goes away. 

Jaqueline Schafer:  It's changing lives.

Zach Abramowitz: It's changing lives. That’s the mission of a podcast, the AAAI podcast. Changing lives. Yes. Love it.

Jaqueline Schafer: New slogan. 

Zach Abramowitz: Jackie, it's been a year. Tell us about what's transpired since our last podcast and how you're working with the AAA. 

Jaqueline Schafer: Yes. it has been an incredible year for Clearbrief and also yes, for really learning how to work with the most, sophisticated customers and law firms in the world. And so that it was a big part of, working with the AAA arbitrators was starting this pilot and figuring out how are we going to, onboard and train these arbitrators who are, some of the most senior, well-respected members of the profession. Many are, retired judges who started, their careers before there was AI, before there was, any of these modern tools.

Jaqueline Schafer: And just really having a lot of humility going into that. That pilot process and designing the pilot in a way where we could, teach them how modern technology inside Microsoft Word could help them with their practice. And so as part of that, we had experience to draw on because we'd had years in the trenches working with judges and courts, and we've been working with solo small firms and we've been working with big law, and I feel like AAA arbitrators are a combination of all three. That's right. Because many of them, unlike judges in courts, they don't have a staff. They don't have clerks, they don't have a lot of people helping them.

Jaqueline Schafer: So they are, often bogged down with this administrative work. And so, from there we were like, okay, how do the solo firms use Clearbrief and how do we train them? And then it was also okay, but what are the judges doing? What types of features are they most interested in? Judges are very focused on accuracy, site checking and also just dealing with voluminous factual evidence and how to organize it. So, we combined a few different tactics that we'd use successfully. 

Zach Abramowitz: The user personas

Jaqueline Schafer: With the private sector customers and the court customers and started working with arbitrators. And so, we learned a lot from it and the pilot was really successful and I'm so proud of that because it just for me seems like it's just a really meaningful way to have an impact on this profession. 

Bridget McCormack: For us, the pilot is a great way to ease the stakeholders into the future. We and Jackie and her team are incredible in designing it and then supporting it so that it was successful. But I feel like if we had just announced a partnership with Jackie, which I would've been game to do after the first time I met her, but if we just did that out of the gate without having this proof of concept period where we could show our panelists how it could work, no matter what their practice was, no matter what their background was, it wouldn't have been as like successful. And 

Jaqueline Schafer: completely agree.

Bridget McCormack: So, the pilot really served a great purpose for us. It gave us like, real data to tell everybody about why this made sense and why it was going to make AAA arbitrators really competitive in the marketplace. No other, organization is able to say that our arbitrators have this functionality now that top law firms are using. So, when a top law firm needs to arbitrate a case. They know that a AAA arbitrator, has available to them the same tool that they might be using.

Bridget McCormack: So, it's right. And its real value add for the AAA, it's unbelievable. 

Zach Abramowitz: and for the arbitrator, it also. Get the sense that the AAA cares about us. 

Bridget McCormack: Oh yes. In other words. Yes. Yes. We want to give you the tools to make you know your practice better.

Zach Abramowitz: And to your point about being ready to partner with her, I remember the last year when we were having the podcast and we were having the conversation and the two of you began speaking, I began thinking to myself, wow, this was like a match made in heaven. These two have taken slightly different, career trajectories, but with lots of overlapping, vectors and it felt wow, I should step out. I don't even need to be part of this conversation. 

Bridget McCormack: Are you saying you want to go?

Zach Abramowitz: So, my point being that I think that it's so critical when you're thinking about who to partner with as an organization is to start with the entrepreneur. And to start with does this person really, care about the problem that they're solving deeply? Are they obsessed with it? Have they been at this essentially their whole career, even before? Do they think like the user, do they empathize with the user? And that's exactly where she started. Yes. Okay, like how can I get inside? I know these user personas, but an arbitrator sort of a collection of all of them. What really matters, like what have you what's been your learning? About. Arbitrators and like what matters to them, at this stage in their career, and why do they do it? 

Jaqueline Schafer: Yes. So, for my, my practice of my career mostly was in, appellate advocacy. I was in-house for some period doing like investigations and litigation and things like that. But I always have still this healthy fear of whenever I talk to a judge or an arbitrator, I'm like, a little bit terrified inside. But that's good. You need that. Because. It was in a way very exciting to talk to them and realize, wow, they're actually really worried about their work product too. Where the advocates were terrified of submitting a pleading with an error or mistake. They're really worried, especially for arbitrators, in courts you don't really have a choice. And you get an arbitration. The quality of the arbitration award that you write is what's going to build your reputation in this industry. 

Bridget McCormack: And not only that, if you make a mistake and it's a mistake that causes a party to be able to challenge the award in court, you have really caused a big problem for the parties, right? If the award isn't enforceable. So, getting it right is actually critical. And as we know, Jackie's tool is better than a tired, hungry human or even a non tired, non hungry human. It's, being able to guarantee that your work product is accurate is something that, Jackie gives them. 

Jaqueline Schafer: and another thing that I think we learned from the work with courts is that they really want to see the case law automatically displayed from sources that they know and trust. Our integration with LexisNexis has been really big and helpful for that because there's a lot of free court data out there, but they wanted to see, in Clearbrief it will automatically analyze your Word, document any citations to the facts. It'll display that factual source, but to the law, it'll pick up, oh, you said to this case, here's the case from Lexis. Here's the case from Fastcase VLex, depending on what you're, what you have access to. And that really helped build a lot of familiarity and trust into their experience using the platform. We also have tools that help with site checking, just these kind of smaller things in a way that, for some people, that's really what capture them first, right? Is like they're not necessarily ready for generative AI right out of the gate.

Jaqueline Schafer: You have to warm people up with how about we just fix your citation mistakes? And often that's where we'll even start another, tool that we focused on a lot with the arbitrators is a non generative AI tool called note taking mode. Because we learned actually from talking with arbitrators, talking with judges, they do it the same way. When you get the pleadings, nothing is going to substitute for reading through the pleadings yourself, reading through the key evidence yourself. And you're not going to really change that, in my experience they've been doing it this way their whole career and they need that reading experience to feel fluent in the facts and in the case, so with Clearbrief though, because they were just reading it, on their. Computer in a PDF. So, with Clearbrief, you open it up. Inside the word add-in, and as you're reading, you can select text and take notes in your Word document, but your notes are hyperlinked. So back to that page. So instead of ending your reading process with like scattered random notes, you have, your specific notes the hyperlink back to the page, and then if you're emotionally ready for it, you can generate that into a fact section. Yes. With the, always the hyperlinks to the evidence.

Jaqueline Schafer: So, it can be easily checked. It can be easily reviewed. So, it was thinking creatively about the workflows, where some, different practitioners might be just ready to use Clearbriefs tools that go right to creating the fact section from your evidence. With arbitrators, you want to build on what their processes already are.

Zach Abramowitz: Yes, and it's you talked about Word, you talked about Lexis. I don't envy the challenge right now for any company that has to build a product for today's users. But also, and you know this because you're in the technology and you see how fast it's moving and behaviors changing. You've also got to design for the future user. How do you build for your current users and your future users? 

Jaqueline Schafer: I do a lot of listening and I still as the CEO and the product leader I am. Involved in probably a lot more conversations than you would expect. I'll be on the calls with, the paralegal, the new user, the experienced user and I'm always just listening for what other tools are you using? What does that workflow look like now? What do you want it to be? And I think it's about really just evolving meticulously based on your sense of the market. One example of that is we released our new user interface about a month ago, I think Clearbrief because over the last few years we've incorporated a number of curated sets of generative AI tools. We've also really continued to build out. The classic natural language processing the sort of admin type tools. You're instantly, creating your exhibits, you can do all sorts of different things with searching and, using classic search.

Zach Abramowitz: Generative AI isn't always great at the easy admin stuff.

Jaqueline Schafer: Exactly.

Zach Abramowitz: That's a total misnomer. It's, it's good at like the high level strategic, the brainstorming not always great at like the easy stuff, 

Jaqueline Schafer: Where you need consistency above all else, and accuracy so. The product has a lot of great depth of features now. And so we made a new user interface that looks like we call it the snake, and it shows the legal writing journey, no matter where you are in the process, you can visualize and see, oh, okay, I have a blank page. I start at the top and I can generate timelines, I can take notes, I already have my draft that I wrote my traditional way, and now I just want to site check it. Okay. I'm at this part of the process, so I'm going to use the last step I want to hyperlink my award to share it with the party, so they see how I arrived at my decision. That's the very last step of using Clearbrief.

Jaqueline Schafer: So, we tried to, piece together all the different feedback and help people visualize, with a new user interface. So that's my messy answer to the question is, you slowly introduce sort of these changes. And one of the things that I was remarking with our new head of customer success, she's amazing and she's, worked for years at other companies. She was at FileLine, she was at other places, and she's normally when you introduce a new UI change you get a lot of complaints. Yes, we got very few, complaints and just a lot of people saying wow, this is great. And so, it, really seems like we did a good job of listening and kind of hearing and interpreting that in the product.

Jaqueline Schafer: Yes. 

Bridget McCormack: What people wanted. Yes. 

Zach Abramowitz: What you were talking before about the best arbitrators. And that's something that comes up when you, when I. When I wanted to learn more about the AAA and dispute resolution, I talked to different people, different litigators and asked, what was important to them. I read, some research that AAA had done internally and that was something that came up we want the best arbitrators, and I think the best arbitrator maybe of. 10 years ago. It was a Harvard law grad. It was a litigator at Sullivan and Cromwell and then and is now retired and either is a mediator or an arbitrator and that's how we judged. And that was the old school way of doing it. I'm like a broken record quoting the Boston Consulting Group study that was conducted right after the launch of chat GPT, and they gave 50% of the consultants at BCG. ChatGPT and said, use it to do your work. And then 50% not. So those, these were the control groups.

Zach Abramowitz: And what they saw was 12% immediate productivity increase for those who had used it. They were getting more work done faster and getting better work quality. But the thing that was the real whoa, was that the low-level underperforming consultants. We're able to even up with the high performing consultants and, as you begin. 

Bridget McCormack: we've seen that replicated over and over again in every study though. That was the first one. But I feel like, did you see the study Ethan Mollick published Monday morning on this experiment they did with p and g. Did you see it, Jackie? It's really interesting. they worked with Proctor and Gamble, and they combined, R&D team members and business development team members. And they like split them up with real world problems, like business problems. And some of them, they gave AI teammates and some of them they didn't. And then they mapped out, how they did along a few different metrics, and they all did better when they had an AI teammate so I, do think if your point is like the arbitrator of the future is going to be using Clearbrief and, 

Zach Abramowitz: I think not only that, but my point is even like a step further, which is it's hard to start saying that you have the best arbitrators or mediators. 

Bridget McCormack: Yes. If they're not able to if they don't understand, 

Zach Abramowitz: if they don't have the AI, 

Bridget McCormack: agree.

Zach Abramowitz: Yes. And that and that's where we're going is like the quote unquote. Best. Like what are they using? Are they bringing a knife to a gunfight? And I think that's, what's so exciting about the technology is its ability to like even things up. And I'm sure people who are intensely smart and accomplished and ambitious and amazing. Or maybe resent that now everyone can have access to that knowledge. But I think that's a good thing. 

Jaqueline Schafer: I think so. Yes. I do think we're just seeing this period of transition where we haven't really had this, I think, we actually talked about this last year and I we're really seeing now that it's taken effect where, this, industry is now just requiring upskilling and it's requiring this new fluency a little bit in, in technology. And we've really seen that come to pass. Where now if I think maybe this time last year was you were still a little ahead of the curve if you knew about AI. Yes. Now you're almost behind the curve if you're not, if you're not using it.
Jaqueline Schafer: I think also for arbitrators. Yes. Every case now is going to have issues that are related to the use of AI, in terms of also just maybe authenticating evidence or understanding, a lot of the issues that are before them. And so, if they haven't developed that basic understanding of the technology or even had that visceral experience of using it themselves, I do wonder are they going to be able to effectively rule in those cases. 

Bridget McCormack: and for parties that are paying arbitrators by the hour the, if they can choose an arbitrator who can use Clearbrief to, do a lot of the work that would've taken them, 10 times as many hours. And then maybe deploy some of those extra hours towards the hard thinking and strategic work that an arbitrator has to do. Why wouldn't you choose that if you're a party? You don't want to pay for stuff that you don't have to pay for anymore. 

Zach Abramowitz: absolutely. It’s like a 

Bridget McCormack: no-brainer. 

Zach Abramowitz: And the arbitrators that I've spoken to, they're not that point about I don't want to decrease my billable hours. First of all, the Law 360 survey that just came out showed that lawyers don't see AI as a threat to the billable hours at all. It's hilarious. I don’t know if that's true or not, but they don't see it that way. But what I think is even I think that incentive issue, at the very least it does exist at the big law firm level. But when I've spoken with arbitrators, they're typically at a stage in life. Where they're not short on cash. They're not going to do it for free as arbitrators, in the early days, would do this pro bono, but they're doing it very often to stay sharp. They're doing it because they believe in and access, to dispute resolution. They want to have something that they're doing post, and it's hard to go from being. 

Bridget McCormack: they're doing it because it's like a critical part of the rule of law infrastructure, which I'm saying it's like we need idea. They care deeply about it. Yes. They care about the rule of law. 

Zach Abramowitz: but they don't care.

Zach Abramowitz: What I think they don't care about is I was able to go 10 hours on this. No. As opposed to eight hours. There's so much that they would rather do excellent work. Do they want to do excellent work? Yes. And not have to be, Al always like 

Bridget McCormack: the work that a first year associate would've done for them at their firm.

Zach Abramowitz: Yes. They're happy not to have to do that. They're not saying, oh, that's too bad. I was only able to bill, 50 hours on that dispute. No, my normal 60. I just don't think that. Have you gotten that sense about what matters to them, 

Jaqueline Schafer: yes, I think it is interesting. As I've learned more about the business of arbitration, and when you think about, for example, the, big law partner where they are still maybe a practicing partner at the firm in some capacity, and they're used to that firm handling the business aspects of how they work.

Jaqueline Schafer: When they're an arbitrator, it's totally different. And they often don't think about, oh, I need to think about what tools I should be using. I need to, market myself. I need to position myself differently. I need to think about, how I build. It's quite different when you step into the arbitration world. So, I really love that the AAA does support them in saying, look, we're going to help you position yourself. We're going to help show how you're the most modern arbitrator and the best, most qualified person in your area. And., I think that's really what a lot of people need right now is there's almost too much guidance out there that's DIY guidance oh, take the CLE, do this online course, this and that.

Jaqueline Schafer: The AAA is the leader and the authority here, and they're saying, okay, we've done our research, we've curated and found the best resources for you. We're actually making it part of your affiliation. And that's what I just absolutely love about how you're going about this, is it's very inclusive. It's inviting everyone, hey, we're going to train you up. That's a big part of the partnership with Clearbrief we're actively co-developing a training course specific for the arbitrators. We're calling it Clearbrief Academy. Awesome. And so, bringing also together with a cohort of others so that they can learn how to do this with their peers.

Jaqueline Schafer: They can learn almost how to run their business, and it's really valuable. 

Bridget McCormack: Do we have a badge, a Clearbrief Academy, AAA badge? 

Jaqueline Schafer: We do. Okay, good. They love a badge. Yes, and I think they should because they should love a badge. It's a signal to the world that you know. You have that expertise.

Bridget McCormack: I think it's good gamification. Yes. 

Jaqueline Schafer: And on that point, so signalling that you have the expertise. Yes. Another piece that I am truly excited about with this partnership is that AAA also offers it to the parties. Yes. So, it's actually offering to bring them along as well, because not all of the most senior partners who are the named partners, leading the work on the case. Yes. On the case. They also maybe haven't quite forced themselves to do the AI training yet, or really, they're like, someone else will tell me what to do there. And so, it's Hey. We are choosing this arbitrator, and as part of that we are actually going to receive, this free access to Clearbrief for the arbitration.

Jaqueline Schafer: Yep. So, they get a chance to learn to use technology and there's an incentive for their client that look, the arbitrator's hours will be, as efficient as possible because you're going to give them hyperlinked pleadings. You are going to make sure that everything is super accurate for them that the relevant facts are really visible to them. So, they're going to believe you more. Yes. And it's going to be a win for your client if you choose to take them up on this. So, one of the tools of Clearbrief is that it will automatically, hyperlink your facts and your law. And we've just heard this all the time from our private sector, users, that I won my case because I hyperlinked to this obscure district court case. And the judge read it, and they followed the exact same logic in their decision. And we got this triple damages award and Clearbrief made the difference. 

Bridget McCormack: It's also, frankly, arbitration records, like litigation records have just gotten more and more massive over the years.

Bridget McCormack: And so, there's so many documents. And if you're an independent arbitrator, retired from O'Melveny and now you have an arbitration practice. And now you have, 20,000 pages of records and you're supposed to read them and make sense of them. It's not,

Jaqueline Schafer:  it's intense. 

Bridget McCormack: The use of your time, it's intense and not a good use of your time anymore. I've had arbitrators who are not with the AAA now come to me and say, I really want to join the AAA panel because I want this. I want to be able to use this tool I've heard about Clearbrief, and I want to be able to use this tool. I met a guy at Howard D's event last week, who's an arbitrator in Hong Kong's 

Zach Abramowitz: Howard Chao at Doon Insights

Bridget McCormack: Doon Insights. Sorry. I know, 

Zach Abramowitz: but I've called him Howard Dunan before also. 

Bridget McCormack: Sorry. Howard Chao at Doon Insights. And he's an arbitrator who practiced with Howard for many years and he's in Hong Kong and he said, this is the worst part. It's like trying to make sense of this record. Yes. It's not a good use of his skills or his background or his experience. That's not really what they're paying him for. To make sense of the factual record. And so 

Zach Abramowitz: he tries to push that work down to associates only find out. 

Bridget McCormack: he doesn't have many more

Zach Abramowitz: he's left the firm. Yes. Yes. 

Jaqueline Schafer: Okay. I have a kind of an interesting topic related to that. So, some of my conversations I've been having with judges too. When they use Clearbrief, they're realizing, wow, I can really, interrogate the record in a different way than I could before where I'm just blindly, following whatever the parties argue, right? And if I have tools that allow me to actually, I have, of course all the factual evidence, if I can easily make a timeline and we have a tool that's actually a curated timeline. So yes, you can do the scorched earth timeline that yes, every single date. But you can also say, look, this is what I'm interested in, events related to this and so it will do that. It actually also has a column that explains why it's AI, it's in timeline. AI thinks it, yes, it's relevant to those topics. It's relevant. Yes. So, everything we do is, explainable. 

Zach Abramowitz: It's that next level of being able to not just do the things that you've been doing up until now faster, but it's wait, this is where technology sort of steps in and offers me like a new way to work a new way to look at something, a strategic way to actually think about the facts. Exactly. 

Jaqueline Schafer: Okay. That, so that was my question there. Sorry. Yes. Does this sort of give us a new way for arbitrators to really get involved in. Their decisions and have it take a deeper look into the facts than they have before, is AI giving them sort of new capacity to even create better work product.

Bridget McCormack: it absolutely can. I don't see how it can't, yes. 

Zach Abramowitz: And especially the concept of an arbitration. Yes. Where, what matters is the four corners of the case as it's been presented to the arbitrator. Yes. And so, this like really gives them like a hyper focus. On that. What I wanted to we were talking about before about we've, the arbitrator's using it now the lawyers are using it, or the judge is using it now. And you just gave a talk about fixing legal's. 

Bridget McCormack: Operating system. 

Zach Abramowitz: Operating system and the point of that talk was. Showing how very often lawyers try so deeply to innovate, but the problem is that they're innovating within a system that doesn't really allow for innovation because it's all based on the courts, and the courts haven't moved. What she just described is that happening in real time, where the dispute resolution provider. Is now using the technology. So that really changes the game for what the lawyers are going to do. And, people don't know this already, the reason arbitrations are expensive is not because of the arbitrator. It's because of the advocates. 

Bridget McCormack: Oh, that's true. Yes. 

Zach Abramowitz: but here by. I think you know what one of your goals with the AAA is, if we can make. Impact on legal's operating system. That's going to lead to so much of the innovation and the promise of AI within the legal and the practice of law itself preach. You're not a law firm, but you're having the impact on law firms. You recently did a whole presentation with Jen Leonard, two law firms, and I think that's like the op the operating level, the operating system to, like, when I heard her explain this, I was like, okay that's the problem. If we can fix, with the analogy we're giving with like cars and the road, if you can fix, we can fix the potholes in the road. If you can fix the puddle, 

Bridget McCormack: If we can fix the potholes in the road then the lawyers can actually run? Yes. So, I love it. It's my idea. Yes. And you're helping me. 

Jaqueline Schafer: Great analogy.

Bridget McCormack: Yes. Yes. Yes. 

Zach Abramowitz: Jackie, I look forward to talking with you. I, it feels like in next year's, next week, like week, I can't wait to hear what's happened. Since then. But congratulations obviously on the partnership, both of you 

Bridget McCormack: and everything else you have done this year. Amazing year for you guys. 

Jaqueline Schafer: Thank you. Thank you so much.  It's been an incredible experience working with the AAA and I just can't, say enough about how much we've learned, how much it's benefiting the industry. 

Bridget McCormack: I agree.