Transform Your Law Firm with Tech Automation |Dan Pascone with Dorna Moini | Podcast #9

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Dan Pascone

Answer Box: TL;DR

Busy law firms are leaving money and time on the table because lawyers are drowning in admin instead of practicing at the top of their license. In this episode, Dan and tech founder–lawyer Dorna walk through how her platform Gavl helps small and midsize firms turn repeatable, rules-based work into automated workflows—combining classic document automation with newer generative AI for drafting, redlining, and negotiation. They cover how to pick the right practice areas to automate, why lawyers only bill ~2.6 hours a day despite working far more, how to use client-facing portals to modernize the experience, and what it really takes to drive tech adoption in a change-averse profession.

Key Takeaways

Gavl’s origin story: While litigating at a big firm, Dorna saw that much of her time—especially in pro bono domestic violence work—was spent on rules-based, repeatable tasks that didn’t require a JD. That sparked the idea for automation.
Initial product: The first version was “TurboTax for domestic violence law,” auto-generating the early-stage documents based on facts and built-in legal rules.
Platform pivot: Other lawyers in different practice areas and jurisdictions asked for similar tools. Gavl evolved into a general-purpose legal automation platform where lawyers can encode their own expertise.
End-to-end automation: Gavl now covers the full workflow: intake & data gathering → rules-based automation → drafting, negotiation, and redlining using generative AI.
Ideal client profile: Primarily small and midsize firms, especially in rules-based or transactional areas like estate planning, family law, corporate/transactional work, and real estate.
Two automation modes: Lawyers can encode explicit rules (if X, then Y clauses/forms) and/or use gen AI features to rewrite clauses, draft language, and propose redlines on the fly.
“Goldilocks” positioning: Many tools are either powerful but require developers, or easy but shallow. Gavl aims to be powerful enough for complex workflows, yet simple enough for non-technical lawyers to set up.
Client experience matters: Modern clients expect digital intake, portals, and smoother communication. Gavl lets clients enter their own data and interact through a structured interface.
Lawyers are maxed out: A recent report suggested the average lawyer bills only ~2.6 hours/day; the rest of their day is swallowed by admin and non-billable tasks.
Future of legal work: The profession is moving toward standardized workflows + tech-enabled delivery, with lawyers focusing on bespoke, judgment-heavy tasks.
Key industry challenge: Legal is highly skeptical of change. Early on, even cloud-based tools were a tough sell, and “automation” often triggered fear about jobs and quality.
How Gavl grows: Mainly via product-led growth and word of mouth—one or two champions in a firm start using it, then it spreads to other groups.
Community & education: Lawyers frequently discover Gavl through Facebook groups, Reddit, and peers. The company publishes playbooks and workbooks that help lawyers improve operations, whether or not they use Gavl.
Customer success with legal fluency: Gavl’s support team is staffed by people with legal backgrounds (former paralegals, lawyers), which makes onboarding and workflow design much easier.
Founder mindset lesson: The hardest part of innovation isn’t the tech—it’s crafting a narrative about what’s possible and sticking to your north star when early feedback is skeptical or misaligned.
Personal tools & habits: Dorna is a heavy ChatGPT user (including custom GPTs trained on her own data) and uses the Pomodoro method to stay focused. Her favorite quote is a Walt Disney story about vision: he “saw it” long before it existed.
Team-building milestone: A big current win for Gavl is filling core executive functions with true experts, so Dorna now learns from her team instead of owning every function herself.

Key Moments

00:02 – Sponsor intro. Tailored Wealth is introduced as helping business leaders live their version of a rich life.
00:34 – Dan sets the stage. Dan reintroduces the show’s mission: cut through noise and help high-level professionals make smart, confident money decisions.
00:53 – Meet Dorna from Gavl. Dan welcomes Dorna, founder & CEO of Gavl, describing it as a legal tech platform for law firms.
01:30 – From litigator to founder. Dorna explains her background as a litigator at a big firm in San Francisco, doing both commercial litigation and substantial pro bono work with domestic violence survivors.
01:54 – Practicing at the “top of your license.” She realized she was spending too much time on rules-based tasks and not enough on strategic, fact-intensive, and courtroom work—the parts she went to law school for.
03:01 – First product: TurboTax for DV law. Teaming up with an engineer friend, she built an app that automated early-stage domestic violence filings: enter facts, get the right documents and language out, guided by built-in rules.
03:30 – Demand beyond one niche. Lawyers in other practice areas and jurisdictions asked for similar tools for their domains, prompting a broader vision.
03:59 – What Gavl is today. Gavl becomes a general platform: lawyers can take any area of law and jurisdiction and encode their expertise, creating end-to-end workflows from intake to document generation to negotiation with gen AI.
04:20 – “End-to-end automation suite” explained. Dorna outlines how Gavl gathers information, applies rules-based automation, then layers on generative AI for drafting, redlining, and negotiation.
04:53 – Who Gavl serves. Mostly small and midsize firms, especially in rules-based and transactional areas like estate planning, family law, corporate work, and real estate—plus a long tail of others.
05:15 – Two core ways to use Gavl. Either build explicit rules and logic flows, or tap into newer gen AI features to rewrite clauses, generate language, and assist with negotiations.
05:57 – Product-led growth motion. Dorna explains they don’t have a big outside sales force. Lawyers usually discover the tool, try it, and then usage expands within their firms from one or two champions to full practice groups.
07:14 – The “Goldilocks” value prop. Many tools either require technical staff or are too shallow. Gavl aims to be easy for lawyers to set up, but robust enough to handle complex document automation and workflows.
07:48 – Deep vs. simple documents. Gavl handles simple templates but really shines when firms want full end-to-end automations for complex, multi-step legal processes.
08:43 – Challenge #1: Changing pricing and value. As pricing models become more competitive and value-based, lawyers need efficiency not just for its own sake, but to maintain or grow revenue.
09:10 – Challenge #2: Modern client expectations. Clients now expect to share data and communicate digitally; Gavl’s client portals and data-gathering workflows support that evolution.
09:56 – Challenge #3: Adoption friction. Lawyers want tech but find tools hard to set up. Gavl’s legal-trained support team (former paralegals and lawyers) plus unlimited support helps flatten that curve.
10:11 – Industry-level problem: admin overload. Dorna cites a report indicating lawyers bill only about 2.6 hours/day, with the rest eaten by admin—a pattern she sees as unsustainable.
11:17 – Future of law: less bespoke, more standardized. She argues that much of legal work can and should be standardized and tech-enabled, freeing lawyers to focus on bespoke judgment and advocacy.
11:36 – Word of mouth flywheel. Initially she leveraged her own network; now Gavl spreads via peers talking in Facebook groups, Reddit, and other communities. Many new users list “other attorney” as their lead source.
12:30 – Content as service. Gavl publishes reports, playbooks, and workbooks on workflow and automation strategy—often helpful even for lawyers not yet using the platform, keeping Gavl top-of-mind.
13:38 – Biggest founder challenge. Dorna says the hardest part isn’t building tech, but crafting the narrative about what’s possible and communicating that to a skeptical profession.
13:57 – Pre-pandemic mindset. Early on, many lawyers didn’t want cloud software or automation; they feared job loss or quality issues. Gavl had to stay focused on its long-term vision despite pushback.
15:30 – Trusting the north star. She emphasizes staying committed to what you believe about the future of the industry, even when early conversations feel discouraging.
16:12 – Lightning round begins. Dan shifts to rapid-fire questions to get to know Dorna personally.
16:26 – Coffee or tea? Dorna chooses tea—specifically matcha.
16:26 – Cats or dogs? She answers dogs, and Dan agrees.
16:50 – Favorite non-phone tech tool. She (unsurprisingly) says ChatGPT and talks about how heavily she uses it.
17:10 – Custom GPTs & training with your own data. Dan and Dorna bond over building custom GPTs and training them on their own business data to save time.
17:40 – Favorite quote. Dorna shares a Walt Disney story: when someone said it was a shame he wasn’t alive to see Disney World, another replied, “He did. That’s why it’s here.” A nod to the power of vision.
17:54 – Favorite book. She picks Marc Benioff’s Behind the Cloud, especially for its guerrilla marketing ideas that Gavl used early on (like staging playful “protests” at conferences).
18:45 – Personal productivity hack. She uses the Pomodoro method—20–25 focused minutes per task, then move on, prioritizing by importance.
19:22 – Bucket list & travel. She and her nearly-four-year-old son are making a summer bucket list. She hasn’t skydived yet (it’s on the list), but has visited many countries; Mauritania in West Africa stands out as a unique experience.
20:07 – Current business milestone. A major milestone is building a full executive team, so each function (product, sales, marketing, etc.) is led by an expert, not by Dorna alone.
20:50 – Advice to younger self. Her answer: nothing. The mistakes and lack of knowledge shaped her into who she is; changing them might change that trajectory.
21:23 – How to connect with Dorna. She shares her social handle @dorna_at_gavl and her email address on the Gavl domain for those wanting to connect or explore the platform.
21:44 – Dan’s close. Dan thanks Dorna, wraps the episode, and reminds listeners to keep their strategy sharp, their goals clear, and their money working as hard as they do.

Episode Summary

In this episode of Making Sense of Your Money, Dan sits down with Dorna, a former big-firm litigator turned founder and CEO of Gavl, to explore how legal tech and automation can transform the way law firms operate—especially small and midsize firms.

Dorna begins by sharing her journey: while litigating at a top firm in San Francisco, she split her time between commercial cases and pro bono work for domestic violence survivors. She realized that much of her day was consumed by rules-based, repeatable tasks that didn’t require her to “practice at the top of her license,” like complex research, strategy, and court advocacy.

Living in a city full of engineers, she teamed up with a friend to build a niche tool that functioned like “TurboTax for domestic violence law.” Lawyers would input facts, and the system would apply encoded legal rules to generate the correct documents and language. As the tool gained traction, attorneys in other areas began asking for similar solutions tailored to their own practices.

That demand pushed the concept to evolve into Gavl: a general-purpose, end-to-end legal automation platform. Today, firms can use Gavl to gather client data, apply rules-based logic to automate documents, and leverage generative AI to draft, negotiate, and redline—covering everything from intake to final agreements.

Gavl’s sweet spot is small and midsize firms working in rules-heavy or transactional practice areas like estate planning, family law, corporate transactions, and real estate. The product is designed to be powerful enough for complex workflows but simple enough for non-technical lawyers to configure without needing developers. That “Goldilocks” positioning helps lawyers move quickly while still capturing the nuance of their expertise.

Dan and Dorna dig into the big challenges lawyers face today. Pricing pressure and the shift toward value-based fees require more efficiency just to maintain revenue. Clients are expecting more digital experiences—online intake, portals, and seamless communication. And despite putting in long days, the average lawyer reportedly bills only about 2.6 hours, with the rest lost to administrative work.

Automation, Dorna argues, isn’t about replacing lawyers—it’s about standardizing everything that doesn’t need to be bespoke so lawyers can spend more time on the judgment, advocacy, and counseling that truly require their training. The future of law is tech-plus-lawyer, not tech versus lawyer.

On the business side, Gavl has grown primarily through product-led growth and word of mouth. Lawyers talk about it in online communities like Facebook groups and Reddit, and many new customers cite “other attorney” as their source of discovery. The company also invests in education, publishing reports, playbooks, and workbooks that help firms map out automation opportunities—even if they haven’t yet adopted Gavl.

When Dan asks about challenges as a founder, Dorna notes that the hardest part hasn’t been building software—it’s been shaping the narrative of what’s possible in a conservative, change-averse profession. Pre-pandemic, many lawyers resisted even cloud-based tools, and the word “automation” triggered fears about job loss or quality. Staying anchored to a long-term vision for the industry, even when early feedback was skeptical, was critical.

In the lightning round, listeners get a more personal look at Dorna: she prefers matcha tea, loves using ChatGPT and custom GPTs in her own work, swears by the Pomodoro method for focus, and draws inspiration from Marc Benioff’s Behind the Cloud and a favorite story about Walt Disney’s vision. A key milestone for her company right now is building a full team of functional experts so she can move from “doing it all” to leading and learning from specialists.

The episode wraps with practical implications: for law firm leaders, serious operational efficiency and better client experiences will increasingly require thoughtful automation. Those who embrace tools like Gavl to standardize routine work and free up lawyers for high-value tasks will be better positioned in a rapidly evolving legal marketplace.

Full Transcript

Announcer: Brought to you by Tailored Wealth, helping business leaders live their version of a rich life.

Announcer: Welcome to another edition of the Making Sense of Your Money podcast, where we cut through the financial noise and help business leaders to make smart, confident money decisions.

Dan: Okay, welcome to another edition of the Making Sense of Your Money podcast, where we cut through the financial noise and help business leaders to make smart, confident money decisions.

Dan: I am your host, Dan, and once again, I’m the founder and CEO of Tailored Wealth. And each episode features a trusted voice from a different piece of the financial world—someone who works directly with high-level professionals to simplify the complex and turn strategy into action.

Dan: And today I’m excited to introduce and bring on a special guest. We’ve got Dorna with us today. And Dorna is the founder and CEO of Gavl, and her firm specializes in and has a really nice legal tech platform.

Dan: So Dorna, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us.

Dorna: Yes, Dan, thank you so much for having me. I’m a big fan and excited to be here talking to you and your audience.

Dan: Likewise, it’s great to have you on.

Dan: All right. So we’ve got a lot to cover. I know that our audience wants to hear your take on a few different items, but before we get into it, why don’t you just give us a quick 90-second overview of who you are, what your business does, and how you got into it.

Dorna: Wonderful. I would love to.

Dorna: So yes, I’m Dorna. I’m the CEO and founder of Gavl. Before starting Gavl, I was actually a litigator at Sidley Austin, a big firm, and I was up in San Francisco. I didn’t set out to start a software company, but during my practice at this firm, I was running into a lot of things that I felt could be solved through technology.

Dorna: This was especially true in some of the pro bono practice I did. I did a lot of commercial corporate litigation, but I also did a lot of pro bono work, specifically with domestic violence survivors. And I was finding that we had so many clients coming in through the door and not enough time to serve them.

Dorna: I was spending a lot of my time on what I call the rules-based parts of the legal process, and I was realizing that I would be better off spending my time on the parts of the case that I really went to law school for—really doing fact-intensive and legal-intensive research, taking the client to court, giving them counseling. In legal speak we call it practicing at the top of your license. It’s the stuff that you went to law school for.

Dorna: So I thought, “What if I could use technology to amplify myself so that I could really spend my time on the more important parts of the case?” And again, I lived in San Francisco, so at the time I feel like all engineers lived in San Francisco, right?

Dorna: And I got together with a friend of mine who was an engineer and I said, “Will you help me build a software platform for this particular area of law—for domestic violence law?” And we basically did that. We built something that was akin to TurboTax but for domestic violence law, and it would allow us to do all the early stages of the case automatically.

Dorna: We built in a ton of rules so that if you said these were the facts of the case, this is how the documents would be spit out. And we started seeing this platform become pretty popular, and we started getting a ton of interest from people not just in the domestic violence arena but from lawyers in other areas of law and in other jurisdictions.

Dorna: What they were saying is, “We want to build something like what you built for domestic violence law, but for other areas of law and other jurisdictions.” And basically, to make a long story short and fast forward to what is now Gavl: we don’t specifically do anything with domestic violence law anymore, but we are a software platform and, as a lawyer, you can take any area of law, any jurisdiction, and as long as you have the expertise in your brain, you come and build that automation into our platform.

Dorna: And so what Gavl is now is an end-to-end automation suite. We do everything from gathering the information to the rules-based automation to the negotiation and redlining through more of a generative AI automation. We can dive into all these terms and what they mean to the lawyer if you’re interested, because there’s a lot to unpack there, but we’re really a full end-to-end automation suite.

Dan: Well, I have several lawyers in my family, Dorna, so I can relate to how important that would be. And I love finding ways to add automation in my business, so I’m sure attorneys, with the amount of time that they spend with their head down in this stuff, see a lot of value in it.

Dan: So do me a favor—tell us a little bit about, obviously you serve the attorney community. Who is your ideal client? What types of attorneys? What types of law do they practice? What’s typically their role? Tell us a little bit about your client.

Dorna: Yeah. So we have law firms of all sizes on Gavl. But what we really target the most is small and midsize firms, and small and midsize firms in areas of law that are either rules-based or have a transactional component to them.

Dorna: Some of the areas that are most popular on our platform are estate planning, family law, corporate—and that’s a pretty big, broad area, but really anything that’s corporate and transactional—and real estate. But then we have a sort of long tail of other areas of law, where as long as you can either with the two parts of our platform…

Dorna: One is you can use our platform by building out rules to determine how documents are going to be generated. Or this newer component of our platform in the past year or so is the generative AI component for rewriting clauses, negotiating, drafting, and redlining documents.

Dan: Got it. And are you typically engaging with an entire law firm? Is it on an attorney-by-attorney basis? Tell us a little bit about how you connect with folks and what that looks like from an engagement perspective.

Dorna: Yeah, definitely. So as a software company, our sales motion is mostly what we call product-led growth. And what that means is—for those of your audience who might not know—we don’t have a full outside sales team.

Dorna: We do have people on our customer team who guide and help our customers on onboarding, but most of our customers come in from people just hearing about us or finding out about us and trying it. So oftentimes we start with one or two or three stakeholders who are the advocates within a firm—whether they’re solo firms, so they’re by nature the only person who’s the decision maker, or they’re smaller or midsize firms where individuals are starting to use the platform and then they typically expand the platform within their firm.

Dorna: So it might be one particular group in a firm that starts using our platform, and then others get word of it being used and they expand. So we gradually grow within firms, but we typically start with one stakeholder.

Dan: Got it. I’m obviously very familiar with the SaaS space—we have many clients in that space—but not so familiar with the sector that you target.

Dan: So tell us a little bit about what makes your product unique and how you help your clients to achieve their desired outcome.

Dorna: Yeah, definitely. I would say that where our product really excels is being almost like a Goldilocks solution for a lawyer to be able to set up everything.

Dorna: There are platforms that are very powerful, but they typically require quite a bit of technical overhead and hiring someone technical to help you set it up. Then there are products that are very easy to set up, but they typically don’t have a lot of robustness and power.

Dorna: Where we are is sort of that middle ground. We are a platform where, when you come onto the platform, it’s very easy to understand how you set everything up—especially now with our generative AI features. Those are sort of just the click of a button and they start to work for you, and you can actually chat with a lot of those components.

Dorna: But you also get a lot of power. If there are pieces of automation that can be done through building out complex rules or by training a system, those are things that can be done with Gavl because we really excel in the deep, complex documents. Obviously, you can use us for easy documents too, but if you are building a full end-to-end automation suite, we can give you that power at a pretty low technical overhead.

Dan: Very cool. Makes a lot of sense.

Dan: What do you think, and what do you find with the attorneys that you work with—what are the top three challenges that they face, and how does your product help them to overcome them?

Dorna: Yeah. So one I would say is that a lot of the world is changing for attorneys—and really for a lot of knowledge work, the world is changing. We’ve had a few of these big phases of change: the pandemic threw us into working from home and doing things in a very different way, and then the AI wave is really pushing people to use technology more.

Dorna: Pricing models have become so much more competitive, especially at the smaller and midsize firms—and really all the way across to the top. Pricing has become much more competitive, so lawyers are trying to decide, “How can I be more efficient—not because I just want to be more efficient, but because I actually want to generate more revenue, because I’m now starting to price on value-based pricing?”

Dorna: So figuring out how to do that end-to-end is really necessary in the legal world—that’s one.

Dorna: Two is the client side. As a lawyer, you have many clients. They’re consuming information in a different way; they’re communicating with service providers in a different way. They need a platform on which they can do that.

Dorna: That’s another thing that our platform helps a lot with: clients can enter their data into the platform, they can create their own little profiles, you can see the data that they enter, and there can be that exchange. So having a more seamless interaction with the other side is important.

Dorna: And then three is that lawyers want to adopt technology, but it’s often hard to set things up. That’s one thing that we really excel at: the platform is easy to set up, and we have a really fabulous customer team. They provide unlimited support on every tier that we have, and they’re trained in the law—they’re all either former paralegals or former lawyers who really understand what our customers are working on. So that specialization of our platform is really helpful.

Dan: Very cool. Very cool.

Dan: So I don’t know a lot about the attorney tech industry. Tell us a little bit about some of the biggest problems that you find in your field and maybe some of the challenges that you feel like the industry is facing moving forward.

Dorna: Yeah. As an industry, I would say that one of the biggest challenges is that lawyers are really maxed out, and they’re still doing a lot of work that, like we were talking about earlier, doesn’t really require their law degree.

Dorna: There was a 2022 report, I think it was, that said that the average lawyer only bills about 2.6 hours a day, which is crazy, because the rest of the day they are actually working—it’s just eaten up by admin. And that’s not just inefficient; that’s unsustainable for a lot of attorneys.

Dorna: That’s where we really excel at helping our customers—just taking repeatable parts of their work and turning them into more automated workflows so they can actually scale without burning out altogether.

Dorna: And that’s really where the future of law is going. There are some parts of it that need to be bespoke, but a lot of it doesn’t need to be so bespoke—less bespoke, more standardized, and more of a tech-plus-lawyer-enabled delivery that actually ends up benefiting everyone, because the lawyer spends their time more efficiently and on serving more clients.

Dan: Yeah—client-facing time more well spent. I have, like I said, family members that are attorneys and a bunch of friends that are, so I can certainly relate to the challenges that they share with me. I totally understand that.

Dan: All right, so you mentioned that a lot of your growth has been through word of mouth. How do you collaborate with either your attorneys or maybe partners? How do you get connected with people to ultimately find your solution?

Dorna: Yeah. So I was an attorney myself, so in the very early days it was great because I had a good network to pull from.

Dan: Network—yep.

Dorna: But now we just have such good word of mouth. Our product is so easy and understandable to our customers that people are talking about us in Facebook groups, they’re talking about us on Reddit, they’re talking about us in the world. And I can’t tell you how many of our customers, when they have to fill out the section that says “lead source,” just say “other attorney.” So that’s been really helpful.

Dorna: We also provide really good service to a lot of our customers. We not only provide help to them when they actually need us and the software, but we have a lot of resources that we provide, and that’s been really useful.

Dorna: For example, we specialize in automation, but even if you’re thinking about automation and you’re not thinking about the parts of automation that you would use with Gavl, we have these workbooks that you can fill out that help you determine how you can improve your practice. It’s not necessarily something that would lead you to Gavl, but it’s really about how we help lawyers where they’re at with the problems that they actually have, so that when they actually need us, they think of us top of mind. That’s been a really good marketing mechanism for us.

Dan: I have basically built my business on that concept, Dorna, so I can certainly relate. Education and value-added content goes a long way, especially in this day and age.

Dan: There’s so much information out there, but if it’s highly specific and tailored to your audience, they’re going to find you one way, shape, or form. So I love to hear that.

Dan: All right, so now we’re going to shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about you. The first thing I’d love to know is maybe if you could share with us a challenge that you faced during your business journey or your life in general and how that’s shaped the way that you do business today.

Dorna: Yeah. In terms of challenges, I think there are a lot, but I’ll focus on sort of a global one that’s maybe most relevant to some of your audience.

Dorna: I think the hardest part of innovation and building something new—and especially as a business owner—is not necessarily building the technology or setting up the infrastructure. It’s about the narrative that you’re creating and the story that you’re telling to your customer about what’s possible. For me, in a field like the law, the most effective way to do that is really by speaking that language to our customer and being able to translate that to them.

Dorna: Early on, when I started Gavl—it’s probably been like five years now—it was before, or right before, the pandemic. The mindset was just in a very different place. The lawyer mindset was in a different place, and trying to sell and implement legal technology in a profession that’s really highly skeptical of change was difficult.

Dorna: People wanted software that was still on-premise—they didn’t want in-cloud software. There were so many things that we really just had to position as our north star as a company and stick to what we believed to be true, despite some of the voices telling us other things.

Dorna: We would meet with lawyers early on—smart, thoughtful, really experienced professionals—and the minute we mentioned automation, they would freeze. They feared that it would threaten their jobs or would sacrifice quality.

Dorna: So we really had to focus on what we knew was the future of the company, what we believed about the industry, and talk to our early adopters without being wavered by the other voices that were taking us in other directions. I think that’s something that probably is universally true for business owners generally.

Dan: I can totally relate to that one. You and I have a couple things in common: A, we started our firms right around the same time, and B, we both served in the role that we now actually serve as customers.

Dan: I think that when you can tell that story of, “I was in your shoes, and I’ve hopefully created a solution to help with either the challenges or the opportunities that are present in your day, in your business, or in your life,” that’s a really powerful narrative. So thank you for sharing that.

Dan: So now we’re going to move on to the lightning round. Those that have listened to the podcast before know that I never tell our guests about the lightning round because we want it to be super organic and fun.

Dan: So with this one, Dorna, all we’re going to do is just ask you to share the first thing that comes to your mind. Sometimes it’s going to be a one-word answer, sometimes you can go on as you see fit, but just give us the first thing that comes to your mind. You ready?

Dorna: Ready.

Dan: All right, let’s do it. Coffee or tea?

Dorna: Tea. Matcha.

Dan: Matcha—okay. Matcha. I like matcha, I like matcha.

Dan: Cats or dogs?

Dorna: Dogs.

Dan: Okay—me too.

Dan: You’re in technology, so this will be interesting. What is one tool or piece of technology, other than your phone or your computer, that you can’t live without?

Dorna: I mean, it’s going to be cliché, but… Can I talk about a software tool?

Dan: Yeah, software works. Software works.

Dorna: I mean, I use ChatGPT so much.

Dan: Me too. Me too. Me too.

Dan: All right, you’re a ChatGPT person; I am too.

Dorna: I am too. I love it. Train it with your own data.

Dan: Train it with your own data—I’m now into creating my own custom GPTs with a lot of our own business data, which has been super helpful and time-saving for me. And yeah, I use it every day. I’m with you on that one; I would probably answer the same.

Dan: Do you have a favorite quote or phrase about business or success?

Dorna: That’s a good one. There are a lot. The one that I’ll share with you—I hope I’m going to say it correctly. There was a guy who was at Disney World and it was after Walt Disney had passed, and he says, “It’s a shame that Walt Disney wasn’t here to see this.” And the other guy says, “He did. That’s why it’s here today.”

Dorna: So really just speaking to the fact that he saw the vision even though he wasn’t there to actually realize it.

Dan: That’s a good one. I like that. I like that. That’s a really good one—really good one.

Dan: Do you have a favorite book on business or entrepreneurship?

Dorna: You know, there are so many. I love so many. But one of the ones that really comes first to mind is the book by Marc Benioff, Behind the Cloud or Beyond the Cloud.

Dorna: The thing that I love most about that is it gave us a lot of the… He did so much guerrilla marketing in the early days of Salesforce, and it gave us so many of the ideas that we started our company with before we really had a brand that lawyers knew. We would go and pitch tents and pretend to protest at conferences, and it was a really effective way for like five of us in a company—before we had more people—to actually make a big splash, gain market share, and have lawyers know what we do.

Dan: Love it. Love it. Very cool. Great stories.

Dan: Do you have a favorite personal hack—productivity, whatever it may be?

Dorna: I do. I do often use the Pomodoro method, where you have like 20 or 25 minutes—some people differ on what they prefer—where you just do a task, and whatever you can get done in that period of time, you do. Whatever you can’t, you move on, and you can move on to the next thing in priority on your list.

Dan: I love it. I love it.

Dan: What’s one bucket list item that you’ve already accomplished?

Dorna: Already accomplished… I’m in the process of making a bucket list with my son right now for his summer.

Dan: How old is your son?

Dorna: He’s four—actually, he’ll be four in a few days.

Dan: Awesome.

Dorna: But “already accomplished”… I feel like I should have one off the top of my list. I want to say I want to go skydiving—that’s one I haven’t accomplished.

Dorna: But traveling to many, many countries—that I have done.

Dan: Very good. Very good. Anyone that sticks out that’s a favorite?

Dorna: So I spent, when I was in college and right after, a lot of time working in different countries for different internships and different reasons. But one that I traveled to was Mauritania, which is in West Africa, and that is one that most people don’t know about. So there’s lots of interesting stories that we could probably talk about forever.

Dan: Oh, I love it. I love it. Very cool.

Dan: What’s one either business or financial milestone that you’re working towards?

Dorna: Business or financial milestone… One of the things that we have been working towards—and we’re all but there in our company—is just having… When I started Gavl, I was doing a lot of the different tasks myself. I was doing product, I was doing sales, I was doing marketing.

Dorna: We now have almost all of the different executive functions filled with experts in those areas, so that I’m actually learning from my people rather than it all being stuff that I’ve done before and I’m just repeating. Now I’m passing it on to the experts. So we’re almost there with having all those functions filled.

Dan: Right people in the right seats—it’s a good place to be. I love it.

Dan: What is one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self?

Dorna: You know, I’ve gotten this question a lot, and what I actually end up coming back to is: nothing.

Dorna: Because I think that a lot of the mistakes that I made when I was younger and the things that I didn’t know are actually a lot of what shaped me and made me who I am today. I’m very happy with the trajectory that things have gone. Obviously, there are things that could have gone easier if I had more advice, but I think that would have made me a different person.

Dorna: When I get this question, I usually just say nothing.

Dan: Yeah—the life experiences shape you in a really unique way. I couldn’t agree more on that.

Dan: All right, and then lastly, if our listeners want to connect with you, collaborate, potentially work with Gavl, what’s the best way to reach you?

Dorna: Yes. So my name is Dorna. On all the socials, you can find me at @dorna_at_gavl. So, “dorna at gavl” on all the socials. And then you can also email me at my Gavl email address.

Dan: Very cool. We’ll put those in the show notes as well.

Dan: So, Dorna, thank you so much for sharing your time and your insights with us today. I really enjoyed the discussion, so thanks for joining us.

Dorna: Yes, thank you so much for having me, Dan.

Dan: You bet. You bet.

Dan: So that’s it for this episode. Keep your strategy sharp, your goals clear, and your money working as hard as you do. Thanks again to Dorna for joining us, and that’s a wrap.

Resources & Citations

Gavl’s website: Learn more about their legal automation platform, features, and pricing.
Automation playbooks: Workbooks and guides for mapping out which workflows to automate in your firm.
Marc Benioff – Behind the Cloud: A look at Salesforce’s growth and early guerrilla marketing strategies.
Pomodoro Method resources: Simple frameworks to structure focused work sessions.
ChatGPT / custom GPTs: Tools for augmenting drafting, research, and internal processes for both legal and non-legal tasks.

FAQs

Which practice areas benefit most from Gavl-style automation?

Typically rules-heavy or transactional areas such as estate planning, family law, corporate/transactional work, and real estate. Anywhere you see similar workflows and document patterns repeated, there’s a strong case for automation.

Does automation replace lawyers?

No. The goal is to standardize the repeatable, rules-based work so lawyers can focus on judgment, strategy, negotiation, and client counseling—the parts that truly require a legal expert.

How hard is it for a non-technical lawyer to set up?

Gavl is designed so that lawyers can configure workflows without writing code, and support is provided by people with legal backgrounds. Many firms start small (e.g., one workflow) and expand over time.

What about client experience?

Modern clients expect digital interactions. Gavl allows firms to collect data via client-friendly interfaces and keep information organized, which reduces back-and-forth and improves the overall experience.

Is this only for large firms?

No. The platform is built with small and midsize firms in mind, where efficiency gains can be especially impactful and where there’s often less internal infrastructure for custom tech.

Disclaimer

This episode and summary are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute legal, financial, tax, or technology advice. Law firm operations, technology choices, and automation strategies can have significant ethical, regulatory, and business implications. Before implementing new tools or changing workflows, consult with qualified professionals (including your jurisdiction’s bar rules/ethics guidance, IT/security experts, and relevant advisors) to ensure compliance and suitability for your specific circumstances.

Next Steps

If you’re a firm owner or partner thinking about automation, consider:

Listing your top 5 repeatable workflows (by time spent or frequency).
Identifying which steps are rules-based vs. judgment-based.
Experimenting with one workflow to automate end-to-end, starting small and iterating.
Exploring tools like Gavl and generative AI to augment—not replace—your team.

To keep stacking better decisions in your practice and finances, check out more episodes of Making Sense of Your Money or connect with Tailored Wealth to integrate your business decisions into your broader financial plan.