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Aj Shankar

Founder at Everlaw

AJ Shankar is the founder and CEO of Everlaw, a pioneering legal technology company. He founded Everlaw, a cloud-native ediscovery software company that has transformed the legal industry through innovative technology.1

Professional Background:

  • Shankar founded Everlaw on January 1, 2011, and has been leading the company for over a decade1
  • Everlaw helps law firms and corporations run e-discovery, investigating massive document collections to find key evidence. The company is currently valued at over $2 billion and has over 1,000 customers worldwide4

Education:

  • He earned an AB in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science from Harvard University in 2001
  • Completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009
  • His strong foundation in mathematics and computer science has been instrumental to his success in the legal tech industry1

Early Career:

  • Before Everlaw, Shankar was:
    • Founder and CTO of Modista
    • Senior Software Engineer at TheFind, Inc.
    • Research Intern at IBM Watson
    • Research Intern at Microsoft Research
    • Software Engineer at International Business Machines13

Recent Achievements:

  • At the recent Everlaw Summit in San Francisco, he announced the general availability of a suite of generative AI features for document review, coding, and analysis in discovery and litigation preparation2

Honors and Awards:

  • Notable recognitions include:
    • Robert C. Byrd Scholar (1997)
    • National Merit Scholar (1997)
    • John D. Barnwell Award (2001)
    • First Place, Berkeley Business Plan Competition (2008)3

Highlights

Jun 6 · linkedin

Building software is the heart of our work as a legaltech company. If I weren’t a CEO, I’d be writing code myself.

For more than 10 years, Everlaw has challenged the norms of building software with an innovative methodology.

In an article published today, I argue for this more effective model for building software, which rejects the notions of agile and sprints but counterintuitively yields higher quality code, more new features over time, and happier, more productive engineers.

Engineering is unusual among functional areas for several reasons.

First, because the standard for correctness is very high: any deviations from spec are considered defects, which often have to be addressed after release at considerable cost.

Second, because – due to a shared codebase – the impact of decisions today, both good and bad, compound relentlessly in the future. Every decision that's made lives on in code that impacts future development.

In no other domain are there clearer, more enduring long-term effects of actions taken today. And yet many engineering teams overlook these critical differences.

🚨 Sprints, while seemingly a quick fix for rapid software delivery, often come with a hidden cost. By forcing decisions based on deadlines rather than good engineering judgment, they can lead to increased defect rates (that must be fixed later at greater cost), a codebase that’s harder to build on, and a burnout culture that leaves developers exhausted and uninspired.

🚨 We focus on long-term outcomes, prioritizing high-quality decisions over short-term outputs. We've empowered our engineers to build the right functionality in the right way, without imposing deadlines. Large projects are run by small teams, giving them the autonomy to make decisions across the stack, rather than for just a component. And critically, we've exercised discipline with our customers, not promising delivery dates for new software that would compromise quality.

🚨 The result? A development process that yields more features, higher quality code, and an engineering team that is happier and more motivated. Our engineers have ownership over what they do, are always learning new skills and domains, and are not constantly firefighting in production code.

This approach is not without its caveats. It requires discipline at the leadership level to recognize the long-term benefits. It’s aided by good product-market fit, so that the company can benefit from higher throughput. And it requires good communication with customers to convey the benefit they’re receiving in return for the lack of a firm ship date: the most innovative product in their space.

We're not just building software; we're building a culture that values quality, innovation, and the well-being of our team. And we believe this is the future of software development.

Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/grRt3EFn

#Programming #SoftwareEngineering

Related Questions

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Aj Shankar
Aj Shankar, photo 1
Aj Shankar, photo 2
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Location

Berkeley, California, United States