About Dan

Dan Lear is a lawyer, legal technologist, and the Chief Instigator of Right Brain Law. He has spent most of his career on one question: why does an industry full of smart people deliver its services the way it does, and what would it take to do better?

He started as a practicing attorney advising technology companies, from two-person startups to the Fortune 100. He left practice to become Avvo’s Director of Industry Relations, where he spent years as the company’s voice to the legal profession: speaking, writing, and arguing (politely) with bar associations about the future of legal services. In 2020 he co-founded Gravity Legal, later Confido Legal, a legal payments company spun out of Gravity Payments, and built it from a blank page into a business. Today he leads Lawyer Services at LegalShield, working with the network of law firms that serve LegalShield’s members.

Along the way he has been published and quoted widely in the legal press and has spoken at SXSW Interactive, Ignite Seattle, Stanford, Georgetown, ReInvent Law, the National Conference of Bar Presidents, and dozens of bar associations and law schools. See Elsewhere and Speaking.

Right Brain Law has been his blog since 2011. The name is explained in the very first post. He lives in the Seattle area.