# Why Basic Legal Software Fails High-Stakes Trials | FluxCap

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki argue that complex legal work needs domain-specific AI, not generic legal software.

- Show: MTS
- Hosts: [Theo Jaffee](https://realalpha.app/people/theo-jaffee/) & [Sophia Dew](https://realalpha.app/people/sophia-dew/)
- Guest: [Jonathan Kanter](https://realalpha.app/people/jonathan-kanter/) · FluxCap
- Guest: [Doha Mekki](https://realalpha.app/people/doha-mekki/) · FluxCap
- Published: Nov 5, 2026
- Length: 22 min

## The best minutes

- [2:11](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=131) [High-stakes litigation needs more than basic legal tech](https://realalpha.app/s/high-stakes-litigation-needs-more-than-basic-legal-tech/) (3 min)
- [5:23](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=323) [Concentrated AI markets can lock out new competitors](https://realalpha.app/s/concentrated-ai-markets-can-lock-out-new-competitors/) (4 min)
- [13:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=793) [Prosecutors will need to interrogate algorithms](https://realalpha.app/s/prosecutors-will-need-to-interrogate-algorithms/) (3 min)

## Also worth watching

- [9:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=589) [Tech companies should build for the long game in Washington](https://realalpha.app/s/tech-companies-should-build-for-the-long-game-in-washington/) (4 min)
- [16:17](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=977) [FluxCap plans to expand its legal AI one practice area at a time](https://realalpha.app/s/fluxcap-plans-to-expand-its-legal-ai-one-practice-area-at-a/) (3 min)

Skip the career-background opener and the closing sponsor reads.

## Summary

Kanter and Mekki led antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department before leaving to launch FluxCap, an AI platform for complex litigation. They say their experience showed them that resource constraints kept lawyers from pursuing more cases and that existing legal software did not meet their needs.

Kanter and Mekki say FluxCap aims to help small legal teams handle complex litigation with AI designed for specific legal domains, rather than generic legal software. They argue that limited enforcement resources and concentrated markets leave important cases and rights unaddressed, and that AI could help lawyers do more work. Mekki says companies need to understand how their technology works as investigators increasingly examine software logs and algorithms. They also discuss political shifts and plan to expand FluxCap from antitrust into additional practice areas.

### Minute by minute

- [0:39](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=39) **Resource limits drove FluxCap.** Kanter says the DOJ antitrust division had more than 900 people, yet resource-intensive litigation kept it from bringing some cases. The division secured a $45 million Technology Modernization Fund grant to build internal tools, but did not put the money to work before the 2024 election. After leaving, Kanter and Mekki found no existing product that met their needs and decided to build one.
- [2:11](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=131) **Generic legal tech falls short.** Mekki says lawyers must police a $30 trillion economy and that public enforcers, in-house teams and law firms all face capacity constraints. She argues that basic legal software does not help lawyers do the difficult work they need to do. The team worked with lawyers and engineers to build tools around those needs.
- [5:15](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=315) **AI could reshape market enforcement.** Kanter sees AI both as a force changing markets and as a tool for legal work; he rejects claims that it is sentient or will take over. He warns that concentrated markets can let incumbents extend their advantages and block new competitors. He argues that policymakers should address those risks early, while markets are still taking shape.
- [7:52](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=472) **Past enforcement failures persist.** Mekki says failures to address major problems in the previous generation of technology have allowed abusive monopolies to remain in settings such as classrooms. She argues that the effects reach companies, small businesses, consumers and workers. She says FluxCap is built for people seeking to vindicate their rights.
- [9:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=589) **Election shifts may reshape oversight.** Kanter says a Democratic wave would pressure leaders to address issues such as costs and inequality, as well as recent government actions that favor some market players over others. He expects oversight to change because, in his view, the administrative state has been weakened and Congress will face more detailed policy choices. Mekki says the balance of power has shifted and urges technology companies to think beyond short-term access to the White House.
- [13:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=793) **Lawyers must interrogate algorithms.** Mekki says smaller groups could use technology to amplify enforcement, and that she would have brought more cases with FluxCap. She warns that companies may not fully understand products they ship, while states are passing laws to protect residents. She says investigators increasingly have software logs and will need to learn how to interrogate algorithms.
- [16:08](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=968) **FluxCap builds for each legal domain.** Kanter says the team spent more than a year building and testing FluxCap with former DOJ lawyers and former Palantir engineers. They designed it to go deep into specific legal areas, rather than apply one generic system across practices. He says it is already in use and gives lawyers provenance, traceability and auditing tools.
- [17:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=1062) **Expansion will follow practice areas.** Mekki says FluxCap is being demonstrated and piloted with different kinds of lawyers, and that the team has received more requests than it can quickly handle. She says the technology is surfacing scams and schemes involving billions of dollars. Kanter says they work with private firms and governments, are in procurement with government agencies, and are preparing a second practice area for beta testing before expanding further.

## Transcript

MTS, hosted by Theo Jaffee and Sophia Dew, with Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki.

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[0:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=0) Nobody needs a filing cabinet with a personality, right? Like the last generation of software is very constraining for lawyers. And we just have a bigger vision for how lawyers work and how lawyers deliver their work. And that's really exciting. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to MTS. Today, I am joined with two in-person guests. We're joined by Jonathan Cantor and Doha Meckie. They both ran antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department, but last week, they just launched FluxCap. This is an AI platform built to help small teams of lawyers take on complex litigation. So Jonathan Doha, welcome to MTS.

[0:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=42) Thanks for having us. Great to be here. Great to have you both. I know right before we went live, we're talking about what an interesting career arc going from antitrust law working at the doj to now working on an ai startup we were here in san francisco and maybe jonathan we can start with your story how did you guys end up here and then i would love to get to get to you do so we i had the most amazing experience with doha at the antitrust division we were running a group at the time of over 900 people bringing some of the most consequential law enforcement actions including against a number of companies based here um some some big tech companies, among others.

[1:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=81) And it was a great experience, but it was difficult. What kept us up at night were the cases we couldn't bring because we didn't have the resources to bring them. Litigation is incredibly resource intensive. So necessity is the mother of invention. When we were at the DOJ, we actually sought out and got a grant for $45 million from the Technology Modernization Fund to start building our own tools internally at the DOJ. Because the election in 2024, Before, we never had the opportunity to put that money to work, but we had the idea. And when we left, we looked around thinking somebody must have built this so that people can do the really difficult high-end legal work reliably in a trustworthy environment with work product that meets our exacting standards.

[2:06](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=126) And we looked, and nobody had built it. There was a lot of basic legal tech, BLT as we like to call it, on the market, but none of it actually did what we needed it to do. so we built it. Help me understand what's actually happening at the DOJ. How is this different from the BLT, big legal tech, and why isn't that efficient for what you guys are working on? Sure. So I started my career at a large law firm in New York City, and I got the opportunity of a lifetime to go to the Justice Department in D.C. and do the real police work of untangling illegal mergers and conspiracies and some criminal work, some civil work, and it was wonderful.

[2:47](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=167) I actually was a counsel to Jonathan's predecessor in the first Trump administration and then had the opportunity of a lifetime to serve as principal deputy, Jonathan, and then lead the division for the last little bit of the last admin. And I saw over and over again that the economy was becoming more complex we had this massive mandate to police a 30 trillion dollar economy and the golden rule is always that markets have to stay open and vibrant so that we can have all these benefits that we all like um you know the innovators know that the best right because they're often going toe to toe with dominant incumbents. And yet the amazing work that was going on at the Justice Department was often, you know, the result of the unsung heroes and public servants who are giving up time with family, working around the clock to make sure those cases got filed. And to Jonathan's point, there was so much more that we couldn't take on because we were capacity constrained. And what occurred to us after I really credit Jonathan with having this vision for being a force multiplier, doing something beyond, it's like starting a law firm, which we could have done, we could have gone to existing firms and done well, you know, was to really think about the needs of lawyers

[4:17](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=257) and to recognize that whether you're at a public enforcer or in-house at a company trying to defend your property rights or commercial rights against an abusive monopoly or a cartel, or if you're at a law firm, right, a litigation boutique, or even some of the largest law firms are representing plaintiffs, you need more, right? Nobody feels like they have enough. And so we got to work with the best lawyers and the best engineers we could find and spent a long time doing the work to build the tech that we needed. Nobody needs a filing cabinet with a personality, right? Like the last generation of software is very constraining for lawyers. And we just have a bigger vision for how lawyers work and how lawyers deliver their work. And that's really exciting. Yeah. You mentioned a really important point. No one foresaw that what you have to now enforce. You said $30 trillion economy. I want to get your perspectives from the macro climate that's happening here, especially because you have your background at the DOJ. How has AI, how has maybe new types of monopolies that are being created because of this technology made the type of work that people are trying to do around antitrust law at the DOJ

[5:45](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=345) a lot more difficult. Maybe Jonathan, we can start with you. Yeah. So I think there are two vectors here. One is the technology as a disruptor and as a transformational agent of change in the marketplace. And then the second is technology as a tool to help do the work that lawyers do. In terms of the transformational change, AI has the potential. First of all, I don't believe it's sentient. I don't believe it's going to rise up and kill people. I think that's overblown but it is a very significant development it is going to change how we live and work uh and think and and but but the people it's scaring people people are afraid they're hearing their jobs are going to go away they're hearing it's going to rise up and kill us with robots or it's going to take over our nuclear arsenal or or spread um diseases throughout the country by or the world. And I think that there's a better, more responsible way to talk about the technology as a tool to help people do things that have value. And so part of our vision and our mission is how do we do that? In terms of the antitrust environment, we did a lot of work in the previous generation of tech where it consolidated and concentrated around a small number of players.

[7:03](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=423) And we heard a lot from folks out here that those large players were blocking opportunities for smaller little tech companies to compete for the next generation of entrepreneurs to succeed on the merits. And so we tried to unblock it as best we could. But there should be some lessons that we've learned,

[7:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=441) **Jonathan Kanter:** which is that if we let markets concentrate, we let a small number of players own a market

[7:27](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=447) and then extend and expand their moats to the point where nobody can win and succeed on the merits, then we're not going to get the kind of innovation we need. We're not going to get the kind of benefits we need. And so I think we have to be attuned to those risks now. And I like to say it's much easier to mold clay than it is to chisel marble. And so if we want to have a free and fair market, we have to fight for it now and make sure that it's there when we need it. Yeah, completely. Anything you want to add? Yeah, I mean, I agree with all of that. I also think that there are Ways that the failures of the last generation to take on very big problems have now evaded a lot of frameworks that have existed for a long time to make sure that we are still a society governed by law and that people can have the benefits of technology. You know, there's reporting recently about ed tech, right? Like we can't get abusive monopolies that courts have found over and over again to have violated the law out of classrooms for you know the youngest students right both jonathan and our parents um that's very disturbing and so what we see is a broader environment where the subordination of laws that promote innovation that promote responsible tech have just been

[8:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=529) been obliterated, and we now have an environment where many people's rights are being infringed, including some of the biggest companies in the economy, small mom and pops, regular people, consumers, workers. And what's fun about FluxCap is we are opinionated. We have built tools for people who want to vindicate their rights, and that's really exciting. I want to shout out our sponsor, Lovable. You know, the app you've been meaning to build, the internal tool, side project, or product you'd otherwise lose a weekend to? With Lovable, you get software you can ship today. That includes an editable code base you can inspect and change, plus two-way GitHub sync.

[9:35](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=575) Lovable also handles the backend and infrastructure, including managed Postgres, auth, storage, hosting, payments, and more, so you don't have to wire it all up yourself. And through Lovable's MCP server, you can create and deploy your project directly from the agents you already use. Turn ideas into software people love with Lovable. Lovable.dev. Now, on to the episode. How has the results from last night maybe changed that and added impact here? Is that for me? Yeah. Look, the morning we launched LuxCap, I went to a conference in New York City. that was hosted by The Economist magazine. And I was asked to opine on what midterms might bring.

[10:24](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=624) And I said two things that I think have largely been borne out. And they were that if Democratic come in in any kind of wave, they have only two choices with the election results. the first is to recognize and meet the demands of people who put them in office right people who are upset about gas prices people who are upset about health care people who are upset about a widening and a quality gap or they can ignore them and my bet is that they are more likely to meet those demands than not. And so the last 20 months or so, all of this activity around golden shares and picking winners and losers in markets and, again, subverting regulatory environments to favor some and punish others, all of that is going to have to be contended with.

[11:34](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=694) But it's not going to look like the last generation because the administrative state has been gutted, which has been a long-term project of some. And you're going to have Congress needing to make big decisions about the minutia of how products and services are delivered and made available for others, whether it's how many. Parts per million and like adulteration is acceptable and food or how to deal with algorithms and software that are, you know, breaking into the most tightly regulated high trust environments like our bank accounts, like our health care information. Yeah. Anything you want to add?

[12:22](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=742) So, yeah, I mean, it's a sea change, right? What happened last night is very significant. The balance of power has shifted and the Trump administration is now on the back end and its power is only going to decline. It'll try to exercise that power. But, you know, one of the things that people in Washington talk about are how folks out here kind of come in and kneel at the altar of the White House. And I think there is going to be a reckoning for that.

[12:50](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=770) **Jonathan Kanter:** And I think, you know, folks in this community should be thoughtful about playing the long game when it comes to Washington.

[12:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=778) Because if you optimize for just the moment, you'll end up pissing off a lot of people and finding yourselves having, you know, less staying power and less influence and frankly being a less trusted voice for the long term. And I think hopefully that's a lesson that people will learn in a healthy way in the, you know, foreseeable future. yeah i am curious in general when you're enabling departments like the doj or antitrust law to now be enabled by tech and they can do things a lot faster a lot more efficiently what does that mean how does that transform everyday businesses so first i think it changes the way that people will have to think about law enforcement i spent 10 years at the doj again including as the you know, lowest attorney on the totem pole, and then have the great honor of seeing two very different administrations administer the law.

[13:55](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=835) I think that the agencies have been gutted, right, especially at the DOJ, which has been hard to see, but it also creates opportunity, because small groups of people are going to be the ones who are first in the door thinking about how to appropriately enforce laws that the American people desperately need enforced. And technology is likely to be an amplifier if done well. Again, we've designed a product. We have something to say about how that should be done. But just speaking for myself, I would have brought many more cases if I had had FluxCap. And I think the intuition to build the thing that we wanted, having all of this experience and judgment and lots of different places was really important.

[14:50](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=890) And then for companies, you know, this is a totally new environment for them. There are products being shipped that consumers who are, you know, sometimes chief legal officers, the general counsel companies, don't even fully understand, right? meanwhile there are states who in the past two years have passed laws to protect their citizens or residents recognizing that the federal government has not fully enforced the law and that is going to be a tough environment for companies that do not understand their technology and how it's being used it is a great environment for tech forward you know inquisitive companies that, you know, feel a responsibility over their innovation. And I think, you know, just as one concrete example, you know, when prosecutors go out and subpoena information, you're often dealing with human sources, right, who are explaining to you.

[16:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=960) **Doha Mekki:** you how things work we're in an environment now where agents have logs right the the question is going to be how do you interrogate algorithms right and that's that's a sea change yeah

[16:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=973) completely what's the timeline here when will this get diffused into society and when can lawyers expect to use this every day it's there we weren't we were building this for uh over a year and so we were in stealth mode. We had to test and retest it. Just a little bit of background. We had a no compromises team. So we took a bunch of our former colleagues from the Department of Justice, some of the finest lawyers we've ever had the privilege and honor of working with. And then we had a team of former Palantir engineers who came together with a vision. And we worked together really in a fully integrated way from the outset. And we've been building and testing. And part of our, unlike the BLT, our view is we need deep legal tech understands domain, understands the precise area of law and go area by area. You wouldn't hire a tax lawyer to litigate an antitrust case and you wouldn't hire an antitrust lawyer to do a labor and employment discrimination. So that domain expertise in a high trust, high stakes environment is going to require that deep legal technology, which is what we've built. And it's out in the wild. People are using it already. We've been in stealth mode, invite only, and it's extraordinary.

[17:19](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=1039) It just, you know, we can talk about how it's built, but ultimately it works better than anything else on the market. It's smarter. The results that it produces are far more professional. It's more precise. And it gives lawyers the tools that they need, provenance, traceability, auditing. It's what we would want to use and what we would use. And that makes a huge difference. Wow. All right. So what's next? I know this week you officially announced that you came out of stealth. what can people expect to see from FluxCap over the next few months well i'll start um we're happily demoing and piloting with um so many different kinds of lawyers in different settings we have been overwhelmed by the reception and the demand we are digging out of the number of requests that we've received um but the technology is in use i mean it's already surfacing massive scams and schemes that are attacks on the gdp to the tune of billions of dollars um and we're we're excited for the first cases to get filed yeah and and so we work with both private firms and governments and so we're in procurement with a number of government agencies which is really

[18:36](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=1116) **Jonathan Kanter:** exciting and like i mentioned we have to go domain by domain the way you would with the practice area inside of a law firm. And so we are already on to our next practice. We started with

[18:45](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=1125) antitrust, which is what we know. And then we're already on to our second practice area, which I can't disclose today, but it's getting ready to start beta testing and should be rolling out in the coming months. And just like a great law firm would go practice group by practice group, we're going to be rolling out additional practice areas. We created an architecture and infrastructure that is capable of going deep into each domain and producing the kind of quality of legal results and output that satisfy our exacting standards. Well, Jonathan Deha, I really wanted to thank you guys for joining us today on MTS.

[19:15](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=1155) And a big congratulations to announcing FluxCap officially coming out of stealth. I think your background, having a different maybe than the traditional tech founder background is so amazing because when it comes to all this intelligence that we have here within the 10 block radius, maybe from the studio, to actually get it diffused into different industries is a whole nother game. And so you really have to be from those industries, understand how it works within, to understand how we can get all of this intelligence and frontier technology to impact a bunch of different legacy industries. So thank you guys. Thank you. Listen, law is not math.

[19:56](https://realalpha.app/v/Y3AeefljdS0/?t=1196) There's no right and wrong, even though people think it is. And so it's an opinion. and it's about advocacy. And so we built a tool that is really designed for that stellar advocacy. Fascinating. Thank you guys for joining. A huge thanks to MTS sponsors. 11 Labs, AI that communicates at human level across every channel and modality. 11labs.io slash MTS. Scale your startup on Neon. Millions of developers and startups have already chosen Neon for their backend. Start on the free plan or get up to $100,000 in credits for your startup at neon.com slash MTS. special thanks to our sponsor kong the ai connectivity platform connect apis llms agents and systems with serious security and governance konghq.com finally prove what your ai investment is worth with lairdan head to lairdan.com today to start measuring your ai's bottom line mongo db trusted to run critical applications by 75 of the fortune 100 the intelligent data platform for the era. Apply today for access to up to $15,000 in Atlas credits, dedicated technical support, and exclusive events and go-to-market opportunities. MongoDB.com. Chargebee, billing and monetization infrastructure for the AI era. Chargebee.com. Blitzy, autonomous software

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