Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

Behind the Scenes at Roboro: AI-Powered Legislative Intelligence

• Charles Uniman

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Ever wondered how legislative affairs professionals keep track of rapidly changing bills across multiple states? The answer increasingly involves artificial intelligence, and Paul Rava, co-founder of Roboro, is at the forefront of this transformation.

In this enlightening conversation, Paul reveals how Roboro's AI-powered legislative intelligence platform is revolutionizing government affairs by shifting it from reactive to proactive. With federal gridlock pushing more critical decisions to state legislatures, staying informed has never been more challenging—or more important. Traditional methods involving manual keyword searches, printing bills, and highlighting changes simply can't keep pace with today's legislative environment.

Roboro tackles this challenge by leveraging natural language processing to understand the meaning and intent behind legislative text. Rather than bombarding users with irrelevant alerts, Roboro functions as "eyes and ears at the legislature 24/7," delivering personalized, actionable insights about legislation that truly matters to specific users. The impact has been dramatic, with customers reporting 30-40% time savings and sharing stories of how real-time alerts have literally changed the direction of their workday.

What distinguishes Roboro is its commitment to building trust. Paul describes how they've incorporated transparency features that explain not just what the system recommends, but why it makes those recommendations. This approach addresses concerns about AI reliability while maximizing the technology's practical value.

Perhaps most compelling is Roboro's philosophy about the role of AI in legal work. As Paul memorably puts it, "We are building Iron Man suits, not Terminators." The goal isn't to replace human professionals but to augment their capabilities, allowing them to focus on relationships and strategic thinking while the technology handles information processing at scale. This approach democratizes access to legislative intelligence, giving smaller organizations the same visibility previously available only to well-resourced teams.

Whether you're a legal tech founder looking for inspiration, a government affairs professional seeking efficiency, or simply curious about practical applications of AI in law, this conversation offers valuable insights into how technology is reshaping legislative advocacy for the better.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the LegalTech Startup Focus podcast. I'm your podcast host, charlie Uniman. On this podcast, I'll be interviewing the people who build, invest in, comment on and use the apps made by LegalTech startups. Invest in, comment on and use the apps made by LegalTech startups. My guests and I will be discussing many different startup-related topics covering, among other things, startup management and startup life, startup investing, pricing and revenue models and the factors that affect how users decide to purchase LegalTech.

Speaker 1:

We're not going to focus on LegalTech per se. Instead, we'll be focusing on the startups that develop, market and sell that tech. So, whether you're a startup founder or investor, a lawyer or other legal professional or a law professor, law student or commentator who thinks about legal tech startups, sit back, listen and learn from my guests about just what it takes for LegalTech startups to succeed. And if you're interested in LegalTech startups and enjoyed this podcast, please become a member of the free LegalTech Startup Focus community by signing up at wwwlegaltechstartupfocuscom. Welcome everyone once again to the LegalTech Startup Focus podcast. Your podcast host, your ever-faithful Charlie Uniman, here bringing you a wonderful guest. Pleased to welcome to the podcast a founder and leader at a legal tech company called Proboro, that is, paul Strava. How are you?

Speaker 1:

I'm doing very well, charlie, thank you for having me. Pleasure is all mine, as we so often do on the podcast when I'm introducing and interviewing a legal tech startup leader. We're going to begin by asking Paul how he came to found Roboro and what his path was. We'll get into some of the specifics next concerning what Reboro does. So, paul, how did you make the journey to founder of a legal tech company called Reboro?

Speaker 2:

Fantastic, thank you. Yes, absolutely so. When I really think about the journey, I've always been motivated by turning visions into execution and because of that, I've found myself focused in industries and organizations that really work to cut through the noise and just try and help bring clarity to complex areas. And this is something both in my personal and professional life that has always rung true for me, and I've spent my career really on the entrepreneurial space in finance operations and helping scale companies. I think back even as a little kid.

Speaker 2:

Financial literacy is something that quickly stuck with me and really made an impact where I was fortunate enough to have parents that taught me about the importance of managing money and thinking responsibly about it and quickly started to talk to friends and peers about it and realized man, this is complex and it seems critical but people don't really understand it.

Speaker 2:

And that stuck with me throughout university, throughout my early career and really diving into why is this so opaque and complex and what can I do about it.

Speaker 2:

And I actually ended up spending the better part of a decade in the credit space as a CFO and really through my Just through technology how can I use AI, machine learning and cut through the noise and solve that in a scalable way. And that's really rung true throughout my career, as I mentioned personally and professionally. Throughout my career, as I mentioned personally and professionally. Parallel to that, my two co-founders, james Gieselman and Jenny Bo. They worked at a tech company based here in Raleigh, north Carolina, as two of the very early hires, building and selling a product. They were working with disparate data, selling into highly regulated industry of banking and really doing very similar type work in terms of how do we apply technology into a field that's historically been so underserved by technology. Dedicated careers towards cutting through complexity, creating clarity out of that chaos and just seeing the massive opportunity ahead, especially in the legislative space, which is where Reboro has focused.

Speaker 1:

Now, how did you come to focus on legislative affairs? If you will, I was a corporate lawyer. I didn't deal with legislation lawyer. I didn't deal with legislation except reading it, interpreting it, advising about provisions of it and, of course, in my chosen field of practice, it's trying to stay abreast of what was happening. But what brought you to legislative affairs?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, very, very interesting. So one of the key areas is there's a couple different aspects of it. One, family and friends and those surrounded by us.

Speaker 2:

Jenny James and I all work and really pride ourselves in immersing ourselves in the local community and beyond, and so some of our friends, jenny's spouse, different areas throughout our family touch different aspects of legislation, whether it's at former senators or working at the General Assembly, and really having enough of those conversations, of the pain points and such a manual process and so much of the process that's prone to human errors, just seemed like something that we've heard before and something that really made sense.

Speaker 2:

And so, as we came together and said, okay, some of the technology that was quite literally impossible just a few years ago is now merely very difficult, and what are some of the industries that are best positioned to be disrupted and really in a position to advance because of this technology? And a big part of that is the ability to understand natural language, and the legal space is one that certainly rang true for all of us. And having those friends, those family members that work deep in the legislative space, wires started to connect and it really made sense that this is an area where we believe we are uniquely positioned to bring on this team, both from the technology side and the subject matter side, to come together and apply decades of learning on what can be done to really advance outcomes. And that landed us, charlie, to your question in the legislative space and broader advocacy as well space and broader advocacy as well, and here legislation.

Speaker 1:

as I looked at your website, we're not talking simply about, or only about, enacted legislation. I got the sense that, really, what you're offering primarily and tell me if I'm wrong is a way to keep abreast of what hasn't been enacted yet but is in the process of being debated, being revised, and where there's a question of what might happen as the legislation to be becomes legislation how to keep abreast of what's changing. Is that a way to look at what Reboro is focused on principally?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

So legislation as a whole, and even stepping back, has never been more important, right, especially at the state level.

Speaker 2:

The level of complexity, the rate of change is tremendously high and federal, for the better part of the last decade has had small margins and often can be gridlocked.

Speaker 2:

Pushing decisions to the state level and with the rate of change and the importance of that, there has never been a more important time to understand how legislation can impact you and you as an individual, as an organization, as a lobbyist, as a law firm, and what we strongly believe is the best outcomes for these groups come when man and machine come together. So you're absolutely right, charlie, when you think about, say, a lobbyist, for example, or a government affairs professional, this is thinking about what outcomes do I want to see and what actions can I take to best influence these outcomes for myself, for my organization, for my clients and others? And so Roboro has built a legislative insights platform that's ultimately bringing real-time legislative intelligence to these organizations and individuals, and what that really means is a new way of monitoring, understanding and acting on legislation that impacts you, being the first to know, so, whether that's influence, legislation that's coming together, or figuring out exactly who you need to talk to it's through every step of the process.

Speaker 1:

How wide is the scope of your coverage? We lawyers in the US and most citizens in the US who, fortunately for them, haven't been practicing law I say that with a grin know that we have a federal set of statutes and regulations, we have a state, and then we have a whole host of local municipalities of various levels and kinds. What range do you cover?

Speaker 2:

Great question.

Speaker 2:

So Reboro has been built so that we can cover all of the above and that is where we're scaling is for that coverage.

Speaker 2:

We have made the intention of starting at the state level and are currently live in multiple states, because one of the areas that's so important to double click on is, as you think about, even for just the state and federal level. So 51 jurisdictions, that is, 51 different legislative calendars, 51 different jurisdictions of legislation, terminology, practices and nuances of legislation, terminology, practices and nuances. So where we've focused is the ability at that state level to start to appreciate the nuances, build that into the Insights platform to make sure it's tailored exactly to what you care about Because, charlie, as you said, local initiatives, local conversations, local relationships. That affects all of us as individuals and as part of organizations and becomes part of the national as well as the global community. And that's been very intentional with how we've gone about building Rebora from day one is to appreciate that, but also be able to scale to both a national as well as a global level with advocacy, firepower and legislative intelligence.

Speaker 1:

And I was impressed in looking at your website and perhaps we can dig down into this a little bit more deeply and, as I may have adverted to earlier, what you're offering, as I understand it, is some predictive capabilities so that the person of interest can get a sense of where the legislation might be going and have a hand in better shaping that. If he or she is, you know, a lobbyist or a legislative affairs lawyer or a business person, anticipating where things might go and beginning to shape the business to take advantage of or protect against what may happen at the state level in legislation, is that a fair description of one of the features here?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely, charlie. So Rebora has really wanted to flip on its head how this industry has typically worked and how government affairs has been thought about. It's been a very reactive industry and reactive workflows because it's been so underserved by technology. Hey, I need to track these bills. Let me put them in and I'll get updates and can read through. You think about keywords.

Speaker 2:

Here are the 130 keywords that I care about, and if something touches this, I want to make sure that, with 50 clients and I have to read through it and figure out how does it impact all 50 of those clients, or I'm in 51 jurisdictions and I need to do that times 51. And so part of the predictive aspect that you highlighted is part of what we've done to change this to be proactive, and we've done that by building from day one as AI native to harness natural language and, to start with the customer, we start by understanding what is it that you care about? And by being able to programmatically operate off of the intent and meaning of language. It allows us to think first about what do you care about so that ultimately, we can become your eyes and ears at the legislature 24-7 and put you in a proactive position so we can tell you what is happening, how it can impact you and exactly what you need to do about it.

Speaker 1:

And where. Looking at the professional, the lawyer, the lobbyist, where do you see? Where have you found the most significant time savings that come from availing themselves of your platform and opportunities to advocate, to be proactive, that they may not have been able to see before or avail themselves of to use that phrase again until we have the natural language, ai capabilities that we now have. So time-saving and new opportunities. What have you seen in practice?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

It's been really interesting to hear the success stories, right from individuals to reporters, to corporations, to top lobbying firms, to AMLA 100 firms that we've onboarded the group, or a law firm that has a lobbying group and government affairs team.

Speaker 2:

They might have people that are on the go at the legislative building and then have counterparts back at nonprofits that may have limited resources but still are just as impacted and trying to make the influence to advance their outcomes. It's been great to see across those type of segments, the immediate impact, and what our customers love most is that they are first to know from Reboro and ultimately what that means right. We've seen, for different aspects, groups save upwards of 30 to 40% of their time where they were printing out, reading bills, highlighting, tracking changes and trying to figure out who does it impact and why. Who do I need to talk to? We've seen 30, 40 plus percent quantified time savings of those teams. We've seen 30, 40 plus percent quantified time savings of those teams. What I'm even just, if not more, excited about is we've but the way they're able to apply this predictive analysis to help their customers, as well as their prospective customers, get ahead and ultimately win more.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've said this before on previous podcasts, but this is an almost teed up, perfect example. I can't imagine and I, as I said, never practiced in the area of legislative affairs but I can't imagine how a lawyer or lobbyist but I'm more familiar with lawyers can expect to be able to compete and adequately represent a client in legislative affairs if they're not availing themselves of this sort of tool. They're not availing themselves of this sort of tool. You know I'm no malpractice specialist and listeners have heard me wonder out little bit when we get into the notion of trust that legal tech vendors, particularly in the AI space, have to nurture in their customers. But I don't see how they can expect to prosper competitively and avoid accusations of ill practice if they don't click on Reborrow and like products.

Speaker 2:

It's so important. You highlighted, charlie, the importance, especially around lawyers, government affairs professionals. The trust is critical and your reputation is having reliable and timely information. Again, being first to know.

Speaker 2:

We've had folks who called us and said their footsteps at the legislative building were rerouted in real time because of a text message alert.

Speaker 2:

They got in the middle of a conversation saying I'm sorry I have to go and running down the hall to the senator's office because something was just introduced that needed to be hearings on their bills through Reboro and, to your point, that is something that is so critical and so important to be the first to know, to know that it's trustworthy and to just have those eyes and ears and that partner so that you can see around corners. The ability to get a call from a client of yours or a stakeholder and say, hey, I just heard about this, what does it mean? And, oh man, I was in one floor hearing but I wasn't in the other, so I'm actually not sure. The ability to query that bill in real time and say, hey, tell me exactly what it says about this and have the assurance that you can have that extra set of eyes and ears absolutely is the future of advocacy and where we see people getting ahead today because of the capabilities that Reboro has introduced and is helping partner on.

Speaker 1:

And, as you've said and I've noted previously on other podcasts, lawyer stock and trade words and not just keywords, and not just Boolean logic and queries of that sort, the ability to just ask and chat with a bill using AI to query it.

Speaker 1:

You know, I, who practiced for 40 years and started way way back when I marvel at the abilities that are now available because we lawyers, who hold ourselves out as being pretty good with natural language, can use natural language to our advantage in digging into the materials that we have to dig into.

Speaker 1:

But, speaking of trust, how does Roboro convey the sense that it is trustworthy? I was listening to another podcast earlier in the day where the vendor was talking about case law review talking about case law review and of course there's the question of hallucination, that bug bear and verification to avoid the awful experience of having submitted a filing in a court with a fabricated case. I would think that, since you're dealing with a corpus of information that is confined to that which is generated by committees and legislatures, you have part of the problem solved because you're not rambling freely into the large space of law per se. But how do you convince and establish that sense of trust with your potential customers and your existing customers that what they see and what they get from Reboro is not only actionable but verified and trustworthy.

Speaker 2:

It's so important and I'm going to even take a step back and say we've been building Reboro for a number of years and part of the benefit of having a diverse team with decades of experience in deep technology and AI and a team that has decades of experience and deep expertise in legislation and the surrounding space is becoming obsessed with all that matters and moves the needle, and part of that benefit is trust is critical, and as AI gets a lot of headlines and the adoption and the focus on how does this fit in, the conversation should be on and quickly will advance to how do I trust this and know I can react on it, and so part of what has been so important in our values and our approach from day one is exactly that, charlie is how do we think through the trust aspect from every interaction, because that reliability is critical, and so in our product today, we are already working on this, because it's not just about hey, I believe them, but working backwards towards what are the important things that influence this answer, and if I think back, even several years ago, with machine learning and various models, there would be predictions in various platforms throughout a huge black box on the back end. Right? Hey, there's a 70% chance of this, right? Okay, great, why is it 70%? Well, we have pretty good training data and I'm fairly certain this is going to be right. That's unacceptable, right?

Speaker 2:

It's no longer sufficient to be able to do that, and so what we've already incorporated in multiple aspects of the Rebora platform is impact estimation as well as logic. So this is not just predictive analytics of what matters to you, but exactly why it matters to you, right? So that being able to double click into why is this being recommended, what drove this decision? Also, certain aspects around velocity Right, we might look at what bills or legislation language is surging during session versus ones that have stalled, and being able to identify that, but then also have the data that is available to you to say exactly why it is classified as such, and those are just a few examples. We have a robust roadmap and feature functionality, and every aspect of that is, first and foremost, founded in trust and the verifiable nature of exactly what is being recommended. To know that from day one and for every day. That is going to be paramount in what we deliver and what we do for our customers.

Speaker 1:

And we're going to hop on one of the hobby horses that I asked you to consider. You know, lawyers are afraid of being replaced by AI, and many people who are not licensed lawyers are, and have for a long time been, afraid that they're excluded from any consideration of what's going on in the law and can only get a sense of it by consulting their often very expensive counsel. How do you see Reboro both augmenting lawyers as opposed to replacing them, and is sort of democratizing the accessibility that common citizens have, non-lawyer citizens?

Speaker 2:

Common citizens have non-lawyer citizens. I don't like the word non-law Latin roots and it means to strengthen or to augment, and what we often say is we are building Iron man suits, not Terminators. We strongly believe that AI can play the role to help augment and really enhance the great work that is being done Around law, around legislation, especially around government affairs, lobbying and advocacy. It is uniquely human and AI could never replace a good portion of that. So being able to augment that, to make sure let's get you to focus on what is most important, which is the relationships. It is building the different areas to help advance outcomes and let machines do what machines do well. It's around precision, it's around scalability. It may be around sifting through in different areas and applying that.

Speaker 2:

Doing that within the right platform, like roboro, with the right guardrails, really allows you your time back, and those relationships, those focuses, not only save you time, but they're what are driving both top and bottom line growth for our customers and our partners. And we often will say you know, back to trust and back to the ability to do that from first calls is we've built you this Ironman suit. We want to take your strengths and we want to supercharge them and make sure we can help. We recently had one of our customers come back to us and say hey, in our first meeting, you told me I'd feel like Ironman, and I do, and that's something that our entire team loves to hear, because it's what we want to dedicate our times towards to make sure we're really up-leveling where time is spent. That way, you can hire to elevate and be able to build the team with the right skill sets.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the real-time features that I've seen mentioned on your website and that you yourself talked about. I mean, that's astounding to be able to, you know, get a text message and, in the middle of a conference, sort of bring yourself further up to speed than you might otherwise be unable to do because you're in that conference. And what access do you otherwise have? Well, you have access to Reboro and if, at that very time, sitting across from a client, if you're a lawyer, you can inject into that conversation the latest and greatest development that might be crucial to that client's business concerns, you know, what better armor are you wearing?

Speaker 2:

You know what better armor are you wearing and what better weapons can you wield than that when it comes to impressing your you think about leveling the playing field and some of the benefit of partnering with a platform like Reboro and what we can do very uniquely. Groups may have a lot of resources, they may have the right relationships, they might be with the right political party at that time to have a certain advantage, and being able to have a partner like Raboro allows you to advance. It also allows to level the playing field. So maybe folks that don't have those resources, they might be a team, team of one. They might not have the staff or the capabilities or the time. It allows folks to up-level and get a seat at the table right. It becomes very important to have that seat so that you are up to speed on what's happening and you have the opportunity to influence it.

Speaker 2:

And one of the great aspects, reboro has real-time transcripts, which has been game-changing. And part of what we've consistently heard from both large teams and small is there are multiple meetings going on throughout session. Many times. In some states certain rooms actually aren't live-streamed, so what you can do is say these are two meetings at once or there's two meetings at once but one isn't being recorded. Let me go to this room and have Roboro up on my computer at the other room so that I can sit there listening to one and watching a real-time transcript in the other. And that's something that we constantly have folks doing, because you can't be in two places at once. But again, the ability to partner man and machine together to advance this really helps drive that forward and has been game-changing for many of the folks that we've worked with across the spectrum.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thanks for all of that. I think you painted a very detailed and very illuminating picture of Roboro and, you know, I can think of beginning to think of many other applications for real-time natural language analysis, even in the transactional area in which I worked. Your experience as a business person and helming a legal tech startup because a lot of our listeners are legal tech startup leaders themselves haven't been through the experience that you've been through what sort of advice pops into your head when it comes to looking back over what you've been doing with Rabora the last several years? I gather, in building it, that you want to impart to listeners who share the mantle along with you a founder and co-founder and head of a legal tech startup.

Speaker 2:

Oh, very good question. You know the successes, the failures, the challenges. But then specifically about Roboro's progress and even 2025 thus far and some of the transformation we've been able to see it really all roads kind of lead to people and the people surrounding you. In hiring right, you've heard me mention our team with the deep tech expertise, the subject matter and industry expertise. Hiring compounds very quickly and whether that's you're building a team rapidly and hiring dozens of people or you're a solo founder and you're figuring out who do you want to talk to about this for a couple hours a week or bring up on part time, those conversations and those people compound quickly in terms of how you build out your product.

Speaker 2:

So, be obsessed with the people that you surround yourself with. Hire A players, because that drives the success that you want to see. And on the flip side too, a company and a group is only as good as what it tolerates. I've naturally become a people-oriented and servant leader throughout my career and I think a big part of that is you're just making sure to continue to up-level who you're surrounding yourself with and demanding accountability of yourself and those around you. And so if I really think about advice on raising money on marketing, on selling into law firms. It all comes back to people, right? My team? We're doing pre-calls, we're doing post-calls for every important meeting that we have, and the reason for that is one of our company values, which is to get 1% better every day.

Speaker 1:

And I know that I do and I hope that I challenge my peers and my teammates to, because we're very intentional on who are we bringing on, and every step of the way, from customer research to sales to support, is going to be represented by someone on the team that we know is dedicated, is obsessed with the customer challenges and working to make sure we advance outcomes for everyone friendly and customer driven to the problem is key, and if you, as the leader of a startup, especially early stage, are not focused as much on hiring as even solving the problem, your investors are investors to be, will be, and you want to be ahead of them and be able to say you know, the people that I've chosen to join with me are A-listers and we all have the same dedication and commitment to customer and problem solving. Great. I want to ask you to tell people well, first, let's make sure everybody knows how to spell Roboro. Let's do that, go ahead.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, it is R-O-B-O-R-O and our website is roboroai and you could also shoot us a note at hello at roboroai, and we love connecting with people throughout this space and a lot of good energy around what is being built and hopefully that is helpful.

Speaker 1:

Well, we'll have to have a conversation, you and I, in a year. I say a year. I want that much time to go by to see what even more astounding advances will be made in AI and the law. Don't get me wrong, it's not everything. It's not AGI the flavors of AI that we lawyers and adjacent professions work with. It's not the Terminator and it certainly isn't the human being with judgment, nuance, experience and emotions, but I dare say that you know we're going to see within the next 365 days. Astounding things happened and you and I will have to follow up then see how it plays out at Reboro and talk about it more generally. You anticipated one of my questions and that's how people can get in touch with you, so thank you for doing that and thank you for being a guest. It was a wonderful conversation. As I say to all my guests whom I haven't met, look forward to meeting you in real life, perhaps at the LegalTech Conference, hoisting a beer and meeting face-to-face.

Speaker 2:

That sounds fantastic. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to chat today and absolutely I look forward to that follow-up conversation and continuing to build from there. Thank you for your time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining me. Thank you for listening to the LegalTech Startup Focus podcast. If you're interested in legal tech startups and enjoyed this podcast, please consider joining the free LegalTech Startup Focus community by going to wwwlegaltechstartupfocuscom and signing up. Again thanks.