Hi Bernardt, thank you for putting such an important topic into a truly digestible form. I really enjoyed reading this and learned a lot along the way.
I especially loved how you articulated the workflow of the lawyer of the future. Despite the countless articles on AI’s impact on the legal industry, none came close to this level of clarity and practicality.
And i’m curious about your perspective:
Do you think the legal industry is relatively closed to founders who don’t come from a legal background? How do investors evaluate this?
For example, in fintech, you know speaking the “native language” of the industry often matters. For example if someone wanted to build the DocuSign of legal, would they need deep due diligence or legal expertise to be fundable? How would you assess this from a VC lens?
Hi! An interesting read. I think the opportunity in this space to build is for domain-specific LLMs. Founders have to pick one problem such as patent research or M&A due diligence and go deep into solving these problems.
The problem with current LegalTech tools is that they market themselves as "ChatGPT for lawyers" thus offering marginal productivity increases for lawyers. Solving for one problem is better than solving for 100s.
With respect to AI being integrated into the judiciary there are 2 main risks I see 1) Bias and 2) Erosion of judicial reasoning.
The risk of bias is real. For example, a study by ProPublica revealed that the COMPOS tool used by the American judiciary to measure recidivism was more likely to flag black defendants than white defendants. Furthermore, these systems do not have to ability to cull out factors like coercion, balancing societal impact with constitutional values and empathy.
Hi Bernardt, thank you for putting such an important topic into a truly digestible form. I really enjoyed reading this and learned a lot along the way.
I especially loved how you articulated the workflow of the lawyer of the future. Despite the countless articles on AI’s impact on the legal industry, none came close to this level of clarity and practicality.
And i’m curious about your perspective:
Do you think the legal industry is relatively closed to founders who don’t come from a legal background? How do investors evaluate this?
For example, in fintech, you know speaking the “native language” of the industry often matters. For example if someone wanted to build the DocuSign of legal, would they need deep due diligence or legal expertise to be fundable? How would you assess this from a VC lens?
Hi! An interesting read. I think the opportunity in this space to build is for domain-specific LLMs. Founders have to pick one problem such as patent research or M&A due diligence and go deep into solving these problems.
The problem with current LegalTech tools is that they market themselves as "ChatGPT for lawyers" thus offering marginal productivity increases for lawyers. Solving for one problem is better than solving for 100s.
With respect to AI being integrated into the judiciary there are 2 main risks I see 1) Bias and 2) Erosion of judicial reasoning.
The risk of bias is real. For example, a study by ProPublica revealed that the COMPOS tool used by the American judiciary to measure recidivism was more likely to flag black defendants than white defendants. Furthermore, these systems do not have to ability to cull out factors like coercion, balancing societal impact with constitutional values and empathy.