RopesTalk · Ropes & Gray LLP

Alumni @ RopesTalk: Conversation with Steven Obiajulu, UseJunior

September 22, 2025·26 min·2 clips

It's 11:30 PM, opposing counsel's draft just landed in your inbox, and the client wants to know that night how bad the markup is — UseJunior produces a risk-flagged issues list in five to ten minutes.

The conversation opens on a career arc. The host introduces Stephen as a former Ropes and Gray colleague who went from MIT mechanical engineering to Harvard Law, then into patent work and private capital transactions. Stephen starts somewhere more personal: supportive parents who pushed math, science, and engineering. That gives the story a warmer base before the legal and product details take over. The interview works best when it lets those pieces sit together. Technical training, legal practice, and startup judgment all show up here, but the episode does not try to turn the path into a tidy victory lap. UseJunior becomes the practical center of the conversation. Stephen describes a document comparison tool with Google's power behind it, plus a preprocessing step that he says makes a substantial difference. Then the host gets to the question legal listeners are probably waiting for: can the tool work without making a mess of security, confidentiality, or access boundaries? Stephen answers with certifications rather than vague reassurance. He says UseJunior is ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type 2 certified over a three month monitoring period. ISO gets framed as an international standard. SOC 2 is described as an American standard tied to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The monitoring detail matters. Stephen says SOC 2 looks beyond written policies, with scanners on servers and monitoring of network operations to check actual compliance. He adds that both certifications came with unqualified opinions, and that certified public accountants were involved in the SOC 2 process. The tone stays friendly, but the host still asks the operational question. The close sends listeners to LinkedIn, UseJunior updates, and Ropes and Gray alumni channels.

As heard by us

A grounded founder story where legal training, technical roots, and product trust all stay in view.

The episode follows Stephen Obijulu from MIT mechanical engineering to Harvard Law School, then through patent work and the Private Capital Transactions Group at Ropes & Gray before he leaves to start UseJunior.

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Why you'd press play

For a grounded founder story that moves from MIT to legal tech, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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