Evan Shenkman is a former Big Law partner turned leading legal industry innovator, who has helped legal tech companies, law firms, and corporate legal departments thrive for over 15 years. As a partner at Baretz+Brunelle, he advises legal organizations and technology companies on innovation strategy, artificial intelligence, go-to-market strategy, knowledge management, and the adoption of tools that make legal services more efficient, consistent, and valuable.
Evan is best known as the driving force behind Fisher Phillips’ groundbreaking 2022 design partnership with Casetext, helping develop CoCounsel, the first generative AI product built for legal professionals. Fisher Phillips became the first law firm to deploy it, through the leadership of Evan, one of the first people in the legal industry willing to embrace and speak publicly about the promise of legal GenAI, well before it became ubiquitous. He has continued to be a vocal evangelist for responsible GenAI adoption, sought after by law firms and law departments for AI and legal innovation guidance, and by legal AI companies—including Vincent, Harvey, Midpage, Verbit, and Trellis AI—as a design partner. He also has served on advisory boards and councils for Thomson Reuters, Litera, Tough Day, HotShot, Courtroom Insight, Page Vault, Casetext, and the Practising Law Institute. He also guest lectures at law schools on legal innovation and sits on WashU Law School’s AI Advisory Board.
Before joining B+B, Evan spent 25 years in law firms, as a practicing attorney and Big Law partner, and most recently as chief knowledge & innovation officer at Fisher Phillips, an international labor and employment law firm of 850 attorneys. He is a frequent writer and speaker on knowledge management, legal innovation, and artificial intelligence, and has appeared in or on NPR’s Marketplace, The American Lawyer, ABA Journal, Law.com, The National Law Review, AALL Spectrum, Knowledge Cast, The Geek in Review, Legally Disrupted, and other leading industry outlets.
Evan’s work has been recognized with ILTA’s Innovative Leader of the Year Award, Litera’s Legal Innovator of the Year Award, Law.com/ALM’s Innovations in Knowledge Management Award, and The American Legal Technology Award for Law Firm of the Year. He is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and was named to the Lawdragon 100 Leading AI & Legal Tech Advisors list in 2024, 2025, and 2026, as well as the Fastcase 50. Before moving into legal innovation in 2011, Evan was an AV Preeminent-rated law firm partner whose practice focused on labor and employment litigation.
He received his J.D., cum laude, from Boston College Law School and his B.S. in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University. Evan and his wife are now empty nesters, with one son studying engineering at Rensselaer and another studying architecture at Syracuse. When out of the office, Evan is typically on the soccer field playing in one of his three adult soccer leagues, hiking with his yorkie, or collecting historical autographs and manuscripts.
