• Legal Tech's Premier
    Innovation Architects

    Legal Tech's Premier
    Innovation Architects

    Helping law firms and legal businesses understand, engineer, design, prototype, build, market, and deliver new legal products and services since 2018.

Who We Are

An unparalleled team of experienced legal technologists

  • More than 40 years of experience working inside law firms.
  • More than 25 years working inside legal technology companies.
  • 1 Juris Doctor, 1 Master of Business Administration, 1 Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management.
  • Fluent in lawyer-speak, techno-speak, business-speak, and jargon-free English.
  • Unmatched knowledge of the legal technology landscape, including partnerships with many legal tech vendors. 
The Sente Advisors
Our Regional Mascots
The Sente Advisors
20 years in Legal Technology. Neota Logic; HighQ; Norton Rose Fulbright; Fulbright & Jaworski; CSFB. FastCase 50 (2015); College of Law Practice Management (Fellow); 3 Geeks and a Law Blog.


Ryan McClead
Principal & CEO

20+ years in technology and law. Software Dev: Apple Inc. Legal Tech: Neota Logic. Lawyer: Fragomen; the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.


Shashi Kara
Principal & CTO

25 years in legal and marketing technology. Shearman & Sterling; White & Case; HighQ; Kira; Validity Finance (COO); AltaClaro (Board); New York Justice For Our Neighbors (Non-Profit Board).


Kate Boyd
Chief Operating Officer

40+ years in technology and project management. 23 years in legal. Dentons; McKenna Long & Aldridge; Covington & Burling; Microsystems; CIGNA. Former Sente Client.


Kathy Valentine
Special Projects Consultant

20 years in Legal Technology. Neota Logic; HighQ; Norton Rose Fulbright; Fulbright & Jaworski; CSFB. FastCase 50 (2015); College of Law Practice Management (Fellow); 3 Geeks and a Law Blog.


Ryan McClead
Principal & CEO

20+ years in technology and law. Software Dev: Apple Inc. Legal Tech: Neota Logic. Lawyer: Fragomen; the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.


Shashi Kara
Principal & CTO

25 years in legal and marketing technology. Shearman & Sterling; White & Case; HighQ; Kira; Validity Finance (COO); AltoClaro (Board); New York Justice For Our Neighbors (Non-Profit Board).


Kate Boyd
Chief Operating Officer

40+ years in technology and project management. 23 years in legal. Dentons; McKenna Long & Aldridge; Covington & Burling; Microsystems; CIGNA. Former Sente Client.


Kathy Valentine
Special Projects Consultant

Our Regional Mascots
"I think this is my good side."

Finn

Brooklyn, NY

"You know that I own this keyboard, right?"

Luna

Westfield, NJ

"C'mon, throw something!?"

Nitro

Virginia Beach, VA

What We Do

  • Equal parts technical and strategic consulting
    • Advise on best practices, our past experiences, successful solutions, and novel approaches
    • Help you identify the right tools and products for your team, culture, and environment
    • Rapidly build new solutions, and help you get them to market or ensure internal adoption
  • Teach your team to build, maintain, and support your products and services, so you're not dependent on consultants
  • 100% technology agnostic and we never take a commission or finder's fee

Our Toolbox

Sente Advisors partners with many of the familiar technology companies that you know and already work with and some you may not know. 


We have sandbox access to many tools and can build prototypes solutions on tools you haven't yet licensed to help inform your technology purchasing and selection decisions.


We regularly reach out to new tech companies on behalf of our anonymous clients to review and evaluate products and platforms before our client gets involved.


The products to the right are examples of tools we regularly use. This list is not comprehensive and we will always work with tools you have already licensed before exploring other options. 

Sente Advisors partners with many of the familiar technology companies that you know and already work with and some you may not know. 


We have sandbox access to many tools and can build prototypes solutions on tools you haven't yet licensed to help inform your technology purchasing and selection decisions.


We regularly reach out to new tech companies on behalf of our anonymous clients to review and evaluate products and platforms before our client gets involved.


The products below are examples of tools we regularly use. This list is not comprehensive and we will always work with tools you have already licensed before exploring other options. 

How We Work

Sente Advisors has a unique consulting model.  


We work for a flat subscription fee. 


You hire us for 3 to 12 months. We become an extension of your team focused on a single project.  If your project finishes or stalls, give us another project and we'll keep working.

We generally work on a 2-week cadence.  Our typical process is as follows:

First project meeting...
  • Meet with your team and stakeholders
  • Discuss the project
  • Ask and answer a lot of questions
  • Schedule interim fact-finding meetings or discussions with your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
  • Plan next steps
Two weeks later...
  • Return with results of our initial research and SME meetings
  • Share preliminary knowledge engineering
  • Show any early prototypes
  • Gather feedback
  • Ask and answer more questions 
  • Plan next steps
Thereafter...
  • Continue with "two-week sprints" for the length of your subscription
  • Every iteration of a prototype gets better and becomes more full-featured
  • Expand the team of stakeholders throughout the project, seeking wider engagement and feedback 
  • Every meeting moves the project further along

What Our Clients Say

What Others Say

Chambers and Partners

 LawTech Consultants

Ranked 3 Years in a Row

2021, 2022 & 2023

SKILLS Showcase 2021 Winner

 Best Presentation 

"Cheap, Easy, Sexy 50-State Surveys"

Introduction of  

with Nicole Bradick, CEO of Theory & Principle


What We Say

The Playbook is where we share our thoughts, opinions, insights, and observations about legal technology and innovation.  

What We Cost

3-Month Subscriptions

  • 3 months is the shortest subscription we offer at $22,500 ($7,500 per month).
  • We recommend that new clients begin with a 3 month subscription, to learn how we work, and what we can do.  
  • Almost all of our initial 3-month subscribers then renew for a full year.

Annual Subscriptions (10% Discount)

  • An annual subscription (including the 10% discount) comes to $81,000 per year ($6,750 per month).
  • With an annual subscription, you will be invoiced quarterly at $20,250.


Frequently Asked Questions

What does "Sente" mean?
Sente is a Japanese term from the boardgame Go.  

If a player is "in sente" then they have the initiative over their opponent.  The player "in sente" dictates the course of play and their opponent is forced to respond and react to the moves they make.

Before you ask, we are all terrible at Go, though some of us have ambitions to only be moderately bad someday.
What if our project doesn't involve creating new products or services?

That's okay.  We work on a lot of different types of projects regularly, including but not limited to:

      • Technology Assessment  - Which tool should you buy? Which licenses should you drop?
      • Market Assessment and Product Fit  - What else is available in this space? Should you even create a product or service?
      • Business Model and Pricing  - Does your business model make sense?  What/how should you charge for you product?
      • Process Documentation and Analysis  - Including extensive interviews with participants and stakeholders.
      • Innovation Program Guidance  - How should you build your Innovation Team or Culture? 
      • Navigating Internal Firm Politics  - Okay, this is never actually a project, but we seem to do a lot of it. 

We are open to helping with just about anything you need, and if your needs fall outside of our wheelhouse, we'll help you find the right people to help.  It is not in our interest to take on projects that are not a good fit for our team.

What if our project stalls before our Sente subscription ends?

We've worked in law firms for a long time, so we know that projects can stall for a lot of different reasons; 

      • Lawyers get busy with other matters
      • Key stakeholders leave the firm
      • Internal testing takes 10X longer than it should
      • Other projects take priority


If any of those happen, just hand us the next project on your list and we'll start working on that. 


When the first project starts back up again, then you can select which project to prioritize and we will focus our attention there until it stalls, is completed, or until you decide we should focus on something else. 

What if we only have one project for Sente to work on?
If you only have a single project in mind for us, we're happy to offer you a 3 month subscription and renew it as needed.  
It's quite likely that during our initial engagement, you will find a lot more that we can help with.  We don't need to establish a set project list before taking on a longer engagement, we just want some assurance that you have work for us and can give us another project to tackle, if necessary.  We do not pause subscriptions.
What if we have 2 projects that are of equal priority?

If you have two equally urgent projects, both of which require our expertise, then you can buy an additional subscription.   


Each Sente Subscription works exactly the same way.  If you have two active subscriptions then you can prioritize two projects at a time and we can meet with your two project teams separately, or hold twice as many meetings with the same team, or pretty much work in any way that makes the most sense to you, but we will give equal attention to both projects.

How many times can we change our priority project during our subscription period?

As many times as you want, but please understand that we do not continue to work on projects that are not currently prioritized.

What's to stop us from prioritizing alternating projects every two weeks?

Nothing at all. Except that neither of your projects are likely to move forward very quickly.  

We don't recommend doing that very often.

What if we need more than 2 meetings per month?

We are more than happy to meet with you beyond our regularly scheduled two meetings per month, as long as the additional meetings are necessary and productive.  Projects often need more meetings when they are starting and fewer over time.  In our experience more than two regularly scheduled meetings per project per month is almost always too many.  Two weeks is a good stretch to make real progress between meetings.

What if I only need one or two months of Sente Advisors?
3 months is the shortest engagement we will accept for two reasons:
    1. In our experience, very few innovation projects can be completed or even substantially progressed in less than 3 months.
    2. We keep our prices low by reducing our administrative overhead, and billing more frequently takes a lot more work.

If we can't help you, we are more than happy to make recommendation to other consultants. 
Why do you work for a flat rate?

We work for a flat rate because we are more excited about doing interesting projects and building cool things, than we are about meticulously tracking our time and then billing our clients odd amounts from month to month.   We keep our prices lower than most consultants by keeping our administrative overhead low.  


Flat rate consulting has the added benefit of making it much easier for our clients to budget for our services.  They know exactly how much we're going to cost during the term of our subscription regardless of what we're working on.  

What's this I hear about discount consulting?

We believe our time is better spent solving your problems than chasing the next client or project, so if you commit to working with us for a full year, we're happy to give you a 10% discount on our standard rates.  


And we'll still only invoice you quarterly. 

I still don't understand something...

There are no unbendable rules here and we are generally reasonable people.   If you want clarification on anything, just shoot us an email or set up a meeting with us below.  

Talk To Us

Find a 30 minute window below to have a quick conversation with us.  Or send an email to info@senteadvisors.com.

 We'd love to hear what you're doing and what you need.

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