In this episode of The Geek in Review, we welcome Feargus MacDaeid and Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, co-founders of Definely, to discuss how their shared experiences as practicing lawyers shaped a groundbreaking accessibility solution for contract review. Feargus, who is visually impaired, and Nnamdi, his former colleague at Freshfields, describe how their friendship and professional collaboration led to a tool designed not only for those with disabilities but for all attorneys grappling with voluminous transactional documents. Listeners learn that Definely began as a way to help Feargus navigate complex contracts more efficiently, and through iterative prototyping, evolved into a productivity suite that addresses universal pain points in the pre-execution stages of contract life cycles.

Feargus explains that his journey to co-founding Definely began with personal necessity: having gone blind from a degenerative condition by his early twenties, he pivoted from a computer science career at Microsoft to law school, relying on assistive technology and immense personal support. Once at Allen & Overy, the limitations of existing tools became starkly apparent—searching for defined terms meant losing one’s place in a 300-page agreement and juggling layers of nested definitions by reading aloud via text-to-speech. The cognitive load was immense. By collaborating with Nnamdi, who recognized that if a solution could serve Feargus, it would benefit everyone, they embraced the principle of “designing for the edge”—creating a platform that brought definitions, clauses, and cross-references into context without interrupting a lawyer’s focus.

Nnamdi takes listeners on a tour of Definely’s three core components: Vault, Draft, and Proof. Vault functions as a dynamic repository for templates, clauses, and precedent documents, enabling users to pull in the most relevant resources from connected document management systems. Draft keeps the user anchored in the current clause while instantly displaying any linked provisions or schedules in a sidebar, eliminating the need to scroll, split screens, or flip between pages. Proof automates common pre-signing checks—verifying cross-references, punctuation, and legal grammar—to ensure a polished final draft. Together, these tools exemplify how Definely streamlines contract creation by surfacing precisely the needed information in a lawyer’s line of sight, thereby maintaining context and reducing manual navigation.

The conversation shifts to quantifying Definely’s impact on law firms. Nnamdi cites a study indicating that attorneys save up to 45 minutes per day—roughly a 90 percent reduction in time spent on tedious tasks—by using Definely’s context-aware navigation. Beyond hard metrics, the founders emphasize “soft benefits” such as reduced cognitive fatigue, higher morale, and improved client value. To capture these less tangible gains, Definely’s customer success team works closely with firms to customize usage dashboards and collect feedback. Feargus and Nnamdi also reflect on the broader legal tech landscape, noting that firms are experimenting with in-house development, acquisitions, and partnerships. They believe collaboration between vendors and firms will ultimately prevail, as specialized expertise in areas like machine learning ops and user experience is hard to cultivate internally and essential for maintaining cutting-edge tools.

Finally, the episode zeroes in on technical and operational safeguards to ensure accuracy and maintain the “human in the loop.” Feargus describes how Definely uses a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approach, chunking and embedding each contract so that any language model query is strictly grounded in the document’s own text. By setting the model’s temperature to zero and building guardrails at every step, they contain hallucinations and ensure that the attorney remains the arbiter of correctness. Looking ahead, both founders predict a rise in agentic workflows—small, task-specific language models that plug into a suite of specialized tools—and a greater emphasis on UX design as software shifts from simple point-and-click interactions to more dynamic agent-driven processes. As the hosts close the interview, Definely’s mission emerges clearly: empower lawyers to work smarter by bringing critical contract information into focus, while preserving the essential human judgment at the core of legal practice.

Listen on mobile platforms: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

[Special Thanks to ⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.]

Blue Sky: ⁠⁠@geeklawblog.com⁠⁠ ⁠⁠@marlgeb⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer (00:00)
Hi, I’m Marlene Gabauer from the Geek in Review. I have here Nikki Shaver from Legal Technology Hub who has some great insights to share with us. So Nikki, please tell us what’s going on.

Nikki Shaver (00:12)
Hi Marlene, so nice to be here.

So we all know that over the past two years, Big Law has really gotten underway with generative AI initiatives. Mid Law, though, is a somewhat underserved market. For one thing, it’s fragmented. Mid Law firms come in many different shapes and sizes, and different technologies are therefore appropriate for them. For example, you have your boutique IP firms that do high-end work and often compete at that upper echelon of the market. You have high-volume tort litigation firms that focus on areas

like personal injury and insurance, you have full service firms that are considered big firms in their regional localities. These firms are typically not as far along in their generative AI initiatives and strategy, so Legal Tech Hub is bringing resources to them, both on our platform and in person. Starting on June 18th in Chicago, Legal Tech Hub is running a mid-law tech and innovation CLE seminar series for mid-size law firms specifically. These are one day a

events that will provide three to five hours of CLE points, as well as practical advice on developing AI strategies and approaching the transformation of your business strategically using generative AI. Firm attendees will walk away having seen solutions and met vendors that can serve them, developed contacts at similar firm that they can touch base with on their mutual journey, and with real best practice guidance that will help them move forward in a way that ensures they remain competitive in the market.

And our conferences are always priced fairly. These ones, there’s an early bird registration fee of just $149 for the day. But for all those listening right now, if you reach out to us to let us know you heard this, you will receive a 50 % discount. That’s five zero. Email info at legaltechnologyhub.com and mention the Midlaw Generative AI Seminars and Geek in Review to get your 50 % off code. The events are on

June 18th in Chicago, June 24th in New York, September 3rd in DC, October 15th in Boston, October 29th in Miami, and November 18th in Atlanta. can register at lthconferences.legaltechnologyhub.com.

Marlene Gebauer (02:33)
CLE, AI insights and a 50 % discount. mean, that’s a triple win for me. Exactly.

Nikki Shaver (02:39)
What else could you want, right, Marlene?

Marlene Gebauer (02:50)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.

Greg Lambert (02:57)
And I’m Greg Lambert and today we are delighted to have Feargus MacDaeid and who is the co-founder and chief strategy officer and Nnamdi Emelifeonwu co-founder and CEO of Definely Feargus and Nnamdi , welcome to the Geek in Review.

Feargus MacDaeid (03:16)
Okay.

Nnamdi Emelifeonwu (03:17)
Great to be invited.

Thank you so much for the time.

Feargus MacDaeid (03:21)
Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Marlene Gebauer (03:21)
Yeah,

we’re really happy to have you. ⁓ Feargus, Definely started as an accessibility solution to assist you in reviewing contracts. Is that correct?

Feargus MacDaeid (03:33)
Yes, yes it is. it started. The idea was born from that. know, Nnamdi and I, obviously we’d met each other, you know, at Freshfields when we were working there together. And, you know, I often really struggled with going through the kind of documentation, especially when you’re working like in transactional law, you know. And I suppose it was just one of those friendships where, you know, Nnamdi always took a real interest in.

how it was I did my work. I previously had a background where I had worked at Microsoft for several years and whatnot and had to transition careers into laws for different reasons. But ⁓ I think really ultimately it was those conversations where we’re both kind of looking at the tasks that we are doing and the jobs that we’re doing and how we’re doing them. And Nnamdi kind of putting the challenge to me, know, kind of like.

what would a good solution look like for someone in my position, you know? And I think, you know, that was fundamentally like driven by a sense of equity and fairness, you know, like just, it doesn’t seem right that somebody is intellectually really capable, will be struggling so much in a law firm to do the same job as everybody else, you know? But I think like after then, Nnamdi kind of put that prototype together. I think when he saw that, I think that’s when he really saw also the fact that, you know,

this is something actually applicable to everybody, you know, because when we sat down and thought about it, a lot of the pain points that we were experiencing were the same pain points. It’s just that mine were more extreme because of the circumstances and much more accentuated, you know, so.

Greg Lambert (05:16)
And just

so everyone that may not know your story, Feargus, I know that you are visually impaired. Can you explain how that affected your life in the practice of law?

Feargus MacDaeid (05:29)
Sure.

Yeah, absolutely. like, you know, it turns out impact on my life and law, like I suppose, you know, it kind of goes back a little way, you know, I’ve been going blind since the age of 11. I have a degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa. Like I’m 52 now, but by the time I was kind of maybe, I don’t know, 22, 23 ish, I needed some form of assistive technology. Like whether that’s large print or using a monitor and

I had originally done a background, know, BA and MA history, but then, you know, wasn’t able to do that as a career in academia. So because I was able to use monitors, I did a grad dip in computer science and worked at Microsoft for about four or five years. But again, the technology just didn’t exist to support that career fully. And by about like 2005, I’d been married then, text to speech looked like it was kind of coming along, you know. ⁓

So my wife and I was like, okay, we’ll do a law degree. And so I did a law degree at King’s College and the technology just wasn’t really there. So actually she ended up working two jobs and reading all my law books to me. She read and recorded all my notes, everything, you know. And then I graduated out of King’s College, like in the top 10 % of my year and ended up at A &O where I kind of, that’s where the rubber really hit the road. was where the reality really hit me, you know, in terms of

the volume of work, the volume of information and the time constraints and just always trying to find workarounds. my life generally is finding workarounds because I think Nnamdi and I kind of brought that into our mission statement in a lot of ways, know, kind of what are we about? And I suppose it’s partly shaped by my life experience and friendship also, you know.

with Namdeon and how we work together, but it’s ultimately, you know, how do you find the most relevant information in the most efficient and meaningful way possible? Like that’s, that’s kind of like a fundamental thesis of what we do. It’s not just about knowing what kind of workflow or pain points somebody has, but it’s actually how do you address that so that it’s the most efficient and meaningful way? Because

You know, I could take like a hundred steps to solve a problem. But if I can find a way to do something with three or four steps, then, you know, that is actually the ideal. And that, think, shaped a lot. when Nnamdi and I spoke, you know, about the idea that we had, ⁓ a huge amount of that was driven by that kind of philosophy of like, you know, well, if we can solve the problem for me, like if Nnamdi and I can make somebody like me efficient.

getting through the documents, you know, imagine what that does for everybody else. So I suppose another real principle there is that kind of, if you design for the edge, oftentimes you get the middle for free, you know, we ended up with a tool where in principle, it may sound like kind of, it started out as an accessibility driven solution, but it isn’t, you know, it’s actually something that everybody can use.

It’s just that I was the edge and somebody like Nnamdi was the middle and there’s a lot more people in the middle than the edge, you know.

Greg Lambert (09:05)
Feargus, what were some kind of basic issues that you were running into just to both do the job and then also ⁓ ways that if you had an idea that could take those hundred steps down to four or five, ⁓ were there any obstacles in actually implementing those, especially in a large firm like A &O?

Feargus MacDaeid (09:33)
Yes. like to talk about like kind of what my workflow would have looked like before, Definely, it actually wasn’t really that different to what Nnamdi ‘s workflow looked like, you know. So a really good example of that would be if you’re a lawyer, saying you’re looking at a contract and you’re reviewing quite a large transactional document, like Nnamdi and I used to work in banking. So some of those documents could be two, three, 350 pages long, you know.

Typically in those kind of contracts, the way they’re put together is you might have like about 20 or 30 pages of definitions at the beginning of the document. And then sometimes throughout the document, there may also be defined terms actually being created in different paragraphs or clauses along the way, what some people would call an inline definition. So you’ve got to imagine, let’s say,

you’re on page 137, it’s clause 27.3, you know? And there’s some comment or you’re reviewing it or you’re doing some form of analysis on it. And there’s, let’s say, four or five defined terms actually being used within that paragraph or clause. Now, for a lawyer to properly understand that, as everybody listening will probably know, they need to actually know what those defined words mean.

so that they can actually understand the context of the agreement or the clause itself that they’re working on. And the way they used to do that typically would they’d do, let’s say, a control F for the word itself, you know, and they’d end up back up the top. They’d they’d split the screen. Like they’d have the document on the left-hand side with the definition section there and their clause 27.3 on the right side. I think Namda, you used to print paper, if I remember correctly, and have it on your desk, you know?

Marlene Gebauer (11:07)
Yeah.

Nnamdi Emelifeonwu (11:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Feargus MacDaeid (11:26)
Or, you know, they were like really the methods that everybody used and I was no different. Like I had found very clever ways like with doing control F, you know, especially in the old word like, you know, but one of those things would be, for example, like with shortcut keys, you know, if you did actually kind of a control F B, you would only look for words that were in bold format. So

I knew most defined terms, let’s say were bold, you know? So I’d always do, if I was looking for one of those, I’d do like Control FB and then I’d type it in and that’d bring me straight to where the definition was. But the problem with that is I’m probably back on page eight of the document now and I have to go back to page 137. So, you know, people were always losing this kind of time with just actually navigating the document for the information that’s already in the document, you know?

And I think another issue with that then is, you know, the cognitive load that comes with that then, because for someone like me then, it’s like, you know, if I see a defined term being used and I now have to go to that defined term, I read it with like text to speech or whatever, because I used audio, but it would read back to me. And then there might be another defined term used within it, you know, and now I have to go look that up. And now you’re trying to hold all that context in your mind.

and then go back to the provision that you’re reading on page 137. you know, trying to implement a solution, there was no solution, you know, like that’s why we built what we built, I think, ultimately. Like, I don’t know how many times Nnamdi asked me in the lifetime of our careers together at Freshfields, where he was like, surely there must be something that can make this easier. There has to be something, there’s got to be a better way. And I used to always say to him, look, Nnamdi , like,

Marlene Gebauer (13:17)
There’s gotta be a better way.

Feargus MacDaeid (13:23)
If there was, would know it. know, like I used to know how to do registry hacks with Word to change like the underlining. You know, I used to know so many different little things, but there was nothing that could save you that time in navigating and looking for the information. another very simple example of that would be, let’s say you knew something was in clause 27.3, you know.

Very few people actually realise it and they’re shocked to know it when they do. But if you do a control F in Word and you type in 27.3, if it’s auto numbering, Word won’t find it. It won’t find auto numbered text. So that’s no good to you.

Marlene Gebauer (14:06)
something people don’t

always know. mean, most people wouldn’t know that.

Feargus MacDaeid (14:10)
Yeah, exactly what I do. I do because I tried so many times to figure out a way to be able just to find so that if I did end up on page eight, I could just do control F twenty seven point three and I’d be back to where I was, you know, but it just didn’t exist. know, and I think that was I think Nnamdi could see that too. He could see all these different things and he was like, dude, there has to be something better, you know. And that then was like, you know, when that conversation started, you know,

Marlene Gebauer (14:11)
⁓ Right.

Greg Lambert (14:34)
you

Feargus MacDaeid (14:40)
through our kind of friendship and just being work colleagues, I think it started shaping itself into like, if you were looking at this 27.3 provision on page 137, what would ideal look like to you? And those elements that we both knew to be true. One thing was we knew that the word that I’m looking at

on that page, we knew it existed in the document with a meaning to it. So we knew the information was in the document. We knew that like, you know, it was always structured in a very particular way, you know, whether it’s like some form of stylized font followed by the meaning or whatever it was. But there was always a way it was done. And I think we’re to say, like, what if I could just find a way to locate that in the back end, let’s say under the hood?

and then just pull it forward so that I don’t have to go looking for it, you know, that it would actually just appear beside me, you know. And now I’m there. I don’t lose any context. can see the meaning right beside me. I can read it. I can interact with it without ever losing context. And I think I can’t remember. Nnamdi has a really nice way of saying it. I can never get it right because he always says it so well, but it’s about, you know,

the ability to kind of read and review and navigate your document without ever losing context. know, you’re always where you are.

Greg Lambert (16:14)
And Nnamdi I’m going to ask you some questions about the, efficiency gains here, but I think let’s back up a little bit. Can you, can you give us kind of a 30,000 foot overview of what it is that Definely does? I know it’s a lot of, you know, the, pre-execution stage of ⁓ a contract life cycle, but can you give us your, your elevator pitch?

Feargus MacDaeid (16:35)
Thanks.

Nnamdi Emelifeonwu (16:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sure, sure,

sure. So I mean, the concept of Definely is, you know, obviously evolved since the initial idea came ⁓ from Ferguson’s problems and the use cases he had. So we’ve now really morphed into and developed into.

⁓ a productivity suite and really the best way to describe what we do is to liken it to making a statue and if you allow me to make the analogy. when you’re making a statue the first thing you typically do is get your raw materials.

be it your granite, be it your iron, it your ice. And so what Definely vault does is emulate that in the sort of legal drafting process. So when you’re trying to create a contract, the first thing you typically do is look for the best templates to start with, the best provisions, the best clauses, and you typically go to your knowledge management.

you know, lawyers or maybe go to the partner and deal with your own associate. So what vault does, it allows you to actually link into your DMS to access those provisions, you know, be it the best clauses from a similar deal that was done two years ago, the best definitions or even the document that’s closest to the current, you know, transaction. So that will be sort of the starting position. Once you’ve then done that, you know, the next phase in that statute creation process is to actually refine it, carve it up, create this sort of shape of the statute.

you’re trying to do and that’s what Definely draft does and that was actually that first product that we released which Feargus alluded to. ⁓ allows you to essentially

review and access and navigate through a contract without actually having to ever leave the provision or the context of your review. So you can access your clauses, your provisions, your defined terms. You can also interact with that information ⁓ from where you are and not just from a single document, but if it’s, as is often the case, it cross refers to multiple suite of documents. You can access any information from any document.

related to that particular document without having to leave where you are. And then the final stage of that statute creating process.

is that you then, you know, wanna put the statute on display or you wanna sort of sell it onto somebody. have to polish it off, refine it, make sure it really looks really nice and presentable. And that’s what the Definely Proof Dots, it’s essentially a ⁓ proofreading solution that allows you to clean up and sanitize the document ahead of, you know, signing or sending it out ⁓ to the other side for review. So it does sort of your typical proofreading tasks, like making sure that there are no missing cross references, you know,

sort of punctuations have been fixed, know, grammatical terms are correct, you know, from a legal standpoint. So that’s how sort of the, you know, suite of products are brought together.

Greg Lambert (19:30)
Definely clearly delivers what?

you’re calling a significant time savings and I’ve read on the report that ⁓ it’s like 45 minutes a day, ⁓ that there’s a 90 % savings on some tedious tasks ⁓ that are going along. ⁓ I will say that, ⁓ for example, I was giving my Lexus people a hard time because they came out with the report that… ⁓

Feargus MacDaeid (19:45)
Okay.

Greg Lambert (19:59)
through a number of 344 % ROI on

using their product. And I was like, do you think anyone believes that? So what I was really wanting to know is, one, how do you go about kind of looking at the true measures of ROI? Because I th...