Legal Software Built by Someone Who Billed the Hours

A talk and live demo with Rachel Bender, Founder and CEO of Batesly Most legal tech is built by people who have never run a matter, missed a filing deadline or explained an invoice to a client. Rachel Bender spent nearly a decade in private practice before she built the tool she wished she'd had. Batesly launched less than four weeks ago and has already been featured on TechCrunch and topped Crunchbase's trending leaderboards for female-founded companies in Washington. Rachel will walk through how she went from practitioner to founder, then show Batesly working on a real matter. What you'll see: Why practice management tools keep failing lawyers, and what "matter-centric" fixes A live demo of Batesly: intake to close on a single matter, including where AI sits in the workflow and where it deliberately doesn't Earning trust from a regulated profession when the product is new The first four weeks after launch: what worked, what didn't, what surprised her Who should come: Practicing lawyers, legal-ops leaders, founders building for regulated industries, and anyone curious how a domain expert becomes a software CEO. No technical background needed. Format: a 20-minute talk, a 15-minute live demo, then open audience Q&A. Come with questions. About Rachel Bender Rachel Bender is a Washington attorney and the Founder and CEO of Batesly (batesly.io), the matter-centric practice management platform built for the way lawyers actually work. Less than four weeks after launch, Batesly was featured on TechCrunch and hit a clean sweep of Crunchbase's trending leaderboards with a 9.3/10 score: #1 Female-Founded Company in Washington, #1 Female-Founded Company in Greater Seattle, #3 West Coast Legal Tech Company and #4 Seattle Software Company. Before Batesly, Rachel was Product Counsel for a social-good tech startup after nearly a decade in private practice focused on complex litigation, including co-lead counsel on the largest class action against a state agency in Washington's history. She was named to Best Lawyers in America's "Ones to Watch" in 2025, a Super Lawyers Rising Star every year from 2018 to 2026, and a Puget Sound Business Journal Next Gen in Law honoree in 2023. She holds a J.D. from Seattle University School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Houston, and is licensed in Washington State and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.