Enterprise legal teams are overwhelmed by inbound work they can't see or control — and it slows down the whole business. Most AI companies chase sales and customer support. Evan Wong went after the function they all ignore.

In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, host Jonathan W. Buckley is joined by Evan Wong, founder of Checkbox — the AI Legal Front Door and Operating System built for enterprise in-house legal teams. Checkbox intakes requests from every channel, automates routine work with AI, and assigns matters automatically based on type and expertise, while giving legal leaders the visibility and metrics to track workload, cycle times, and resources. For the business, that means instant answers, faster turnaround times, and full transparency into where requests stand.

The wedge is the story. Legal ops is one of the least glamorous corners of enterprise software, and enterprise legal teams have historically been invisible inside their own companies — no real operating system to manage the flood of inbound work. Checkbox picked that beachhead deliberately, positioned itself as the front door to the legal function, and earned its way into serious procurement environments: named customers include Analog Devices, SAP, Coca-Cola, and Woolworths — with no IT required to deploy and minimal change management.

Jonathan and Evan get into the origin of that bet — who first convinced Evan that in-house legal was the right beachhead — what early selling looks like when the buyers are lawyers rather than revenue leaders, how Checkbox thinks about applying generative AI to a function most AI companies have ignored, and the growth challenge Evan names candidly: adding revenue at a rapidly increasing rate quarter over quarter to hit growth goals.

Every episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon and more: https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com

Connect with Evan Wong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theevanwong
Checkbox: https://www.checkbox.ai

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