𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵? ILTACON2026 - Rob Kwiatkowski

At ILTACON 2026, Tim Kenney sat down with Rob Kwiatkowski, Founder of Discernis, to talk about his career journey, how he found his way into legal, and why he decided to build a company around one of the industry’s biggest problems: 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮. Rob started in academic research, completed a PhD in reinforcement learning at Columbia, and later worked at AWS building reinforcement learning pipelines for early commercial language models. His move into legal came after recognising that the data problems he was solving in tech looked remarkably similar to the ones lawyers were facing. 💡 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀: → The best legal tech often starts with a real problem, not a buzzword. → In complex litigation and investigations, the challenge is often finding the evidence that actually moves the needle. → AI can act as a force multiplier, helping teams do more with the same resources. → Staying ahead means constantly talking to customers and learning from the latest research. → The next shift may be from AI helping with individual tasks to AI handling more of the full workflow end to end. A great conversation about curiosity, career pivots and building technology around real legal problems.