Nehal Madhani

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Alt Legal

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Nehal Madhani is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Alt Legal, a legal technology company that automates trademark and intellectual property docketing – the unglamorous but consequential work of tracking filings, office actions, renewals and statutory deadlines across a portfolio of marks, where a single missed date can cost a client a registration. Most docketing tools were general matter-management systems bent into shape for IP. Alt Legal’s proposition is that trademarks deserve software built for trademarks, connected directly to trademark office data so that the docket updates itself rather than depending on a paralegal typing dates into a calendar. Madhani built it from the inside of the problem: he practised as an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis, concluded that a large share of legal work was mechanical enough to automate, left a six-figure salary, taught himself Python and Django, and co-founded the company in 2014 with an IP paralegal and a designer. It now serves more than 1,000 subscribing organizations, including Am Law 200 firms and Fortune 500 legal departments, managing over a million filings and deadlines.

Career Highlights

• Founded Alt Legal in 2014 with Charles Amoako, an IP paralegal and technologist, and Gabe Kneisley, a designer, and has led it as CEO since.
• Grew the platform past 1,000 subscribing organizations managing more than one million filings and deadlines, with offices in New York and London.
• Serves Am Law 200 law firms and Fortune 500 corporate legal departments.
• Practised as an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before moving into legal technology.
• Taught himself Python and Django programming in order to build the first version of the product.
• Served as a CodeX fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Legal Informatics.
• Sits on the advisory board of LexFusion.
• Writes for World Trademark Review and speaks on legal technology and IP practice, including at Alt Legal’s own Connect conference.
• Holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, a Wharton certificate in business and public policy, and a BA from Northwestern.

Professional Journey

Madhani is a first-generation American. He took a BA at Northwestern University, then a JD at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, adding a certificate in Business and Public Policy from Wharton – a combination that put business and regulatory training alongside the legal qualification well before he did anything entrepreneurial with it.

He began his career as an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the largest and most demanding firms in the profession. What he took from it was not a specialism but a diagnosis: a significant proportion of what lawyers and their support staff spend time on is repetitive administration that software could do more reliably than people, and trademark prosecution – with its dense schedule of deadlines tied to publicly available filing data – was among the clearest cases.

Acting on that meant leaving a six-figure salary and learning to build. He taught himself Python and the Django framework, and became a CodeX fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Legal Informatics, the research centre at the middle of the legal technology field. Rather than build alone, he partnered with the two kinds of expertise his own background lacked: Charles Amoako, an IP paralegal and technologist who knew the docketing workflow as a practitioner, and Gabe Kneisley, a designer. The three founded Alt Legal in 2014.

The product’s design principle is that a trademark docket should be derived from the source data rather than maintained by hand. Alt Legal connects to trademark office records so that filings, deadlines and status changes propagate automatically, which removes both the labour and the failure mode of manual entry. That turned out to appeal across a wide range of practice sizes, from solo IP practitioners to Am Law 200 firms and Fortune 500 in-house teams, and the company has grown to more than 1,000 subscribing organizations tracking over a million filings and deadlines from offices in New York and London.

Madhani has stayed visible in the legal technology field beyond his own company, writing for World Trademark Review, speaking on legal technology and IP practice, hosting Alt Legal’s Connect conference, and serving on the advisory board of LexFusion. Outside work he is, by his own description, a pizza addict who makes it from scratch, and shoots photography on manual cameras.

Education

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Juris Doctor (JD)

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Certificate, Business and Public Policy

Northwestern University

Bachelor of Arts (BA)