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This week, we bring back our original TGIR podcast guest, Zena Applebaum. Zena is now the Senior Vice President of Market Development at Harbor, and we discuss the ongoing transformation driven by technological advancements and strategic shifts. Her insights provide a valuable perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing legal professionals as they navigate these changes.

Zena talks about the integration of generative AI (Gen AI) into legal research tools, particularly at Thomson Reuters, where she previously worked. She emphasizes the challenges in managing expectations around AI’s capabilities while ensuring that the products deliver on their promises. The legal industry has high expectations for AI to simplify the time-consuming and complex nature of legal research. However, Applebaum highlights the need for balance, as legal research remains inherently challenging, and overpromising on AI’s potential could lead to dissatisfaction among users.

Zena was one of the first in the legal market to understand the role of competitive intelligence in shaping product development and market strategies. Applebaum reflects on her experience at Thomson Reuters, where she applied competitive intelligence not just to monitor competitors but to anticipate market dynamics and plan for the future. This approach allowed Thomson Reuters to stay ahead by avoiding surprises and making informed decisions that aligned with long-term goals. Her emphasis on listening to customer needs and understanding market trends underscores the importance of strategic foresight in the legal tech industry.

We also talk about Zena’s move over to Harbor, where she now focuses on market development. She explains that her move was motivated by the opportunity to impact a smaller, more agile company and leverage her legal domain expertise in a broader context. At Harbor, Applebaum aims to redefine the company’s value proposition and position it as a holistic service provider for the legal industry. This shift from a product-centric role to a more strategic, client-focused position highlights the evolving nature of legal services and the increasing demand for comprehensive solutions that address various aspects of legal practice.

Furthermore, the podcast explores the potential impact of AI on the legal landscape and Harbor’s role in helping law firms and legal departments adapt to these changes. Applebaum notes that while AI has not yet revolutionized the industry as quickly as some anticipated, it is gradually driving efficiency and reshaping how legal professionals approach their work. Harbor’s technology-agnostic approach allows it to assist firms in optimizing their tech stacks and preparing for the future, whether through AI, cloud migration, or other technological advancements. This adaptability positions Harbor as a key player in guiding firms through the ongoing digital transformation.

Zena shares her outlook on the future of the legal industry, particularly the growing sophistication of in-house legal departments and the increasing competition for legal talent. She predicts that as AI continues to enhance efficiency and drive changes in the industry, the demand for skilled legal professionals will rise. Law firms will need to adapt to these shifts by embracing new technologies and rethinking their strategies to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

 

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading AI, Market Dynamics, and the Future of Legal Services with Harbor’s Zena Applebaum

Our friend Damien Riehl stopped by to talk with Marlene Gebauer about two big happenings at vLex. Riehl unveiled exciting advancements in vLex’s AI-powered legal research platform and shed light on vLex’s commitment to streamlining legal workflows and reducing the need for extensive prompt engineering.

One of the major developments is the enhanced document analysis feature. Users can now upload legal documents, such as complaints, and vLex’s AI will automatically extract key information including claims, facts, parties involved, and potential legal defenses. This eliminates the tedious manual process of reviewing and analyzing documents, saving lawyers significant time and effort. Additionally, the platform suggests relevant legal research questions based on the document’s content, further expediting the research process.

vLex’s advancements directly address the growing concerns surrounding prompt engineering in legal tech. By automating key analytical tasks, the platform empowers lawyers to focus on higher-level strategizing and client interactions, rather than spending hours crafting the perfect prompts for AI tools. Riehl echoes the sentiment of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, believing that successful AI integration should render prompt engineering obsolete. He acknowledges that the option to fine-tune prompts remains, similar to Boolean search techniques, but emphasizes that vLex aims to make it a choice rather than a necessity.

The potential impact on the legal industry is substantial. Clients, especially large corporations, can leverage vLex’s capabilities to analyze past legal actions and assess the value provided by their law firms. This transparency could lead to a shift from billable hours to flat-fee arrangements, incentivizing efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Further amplifying vLex’s potential, the company welcomes Daniel Hoadley, a renowned legal tech expert, to lead their research and development team. Hoadley’s expertise in data science and large language models promises exciting advancements in harnessing the power of vLex’s vast legal document database. With a robust roadmap of projects, vLex’s is poised to continue pushing the boundaries of legal technology and shaping the future of legal practice.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading Vlex Pushes Legal Tech Boundaries with New Features and Top Talent

In this episode of “The Geek in Review,” hosts Greg Lambert and Marlene Gebauer celebrate the one-year anniversary of CoCounsel, the pioneering Generative AI Legal Research Tool launched by CaseText. They are joined by Pablo Arredondo, Vice President of CoCounsel at Thomson Reuters and co-founder of CaseText, to discuss the significant strides and challenges faced in developing and implementing generative AI in legal research. Pablo shares insights into the early days of exploring generative AI and the transformative potential it held for overcoming the limitations of traditional keyword-based search methods in legal research.

The conversation delves into the technical and strategic journey of bringing CoCounsel to market, highlighting the team’s rapid pivot to leverage GPT-4 technology and the collaborative effort that ensured its successful launch. Pablo emphasizes the importance of quality control, trust, and addressing the nuanced requirements of legal research to ensure that CoCounsel met the high expectations of its users, including law librarians and legal professionals.

Pablo also reflects on the broader implications of generative AI for the legal industry, including the rapid adoption by law firms and legal departments seeking to leverage this technology to enhance their research capabilities and workflow efficiencies. The discussion touches on the ongoing challenges and opportunities presented by generative AI, such as regulatory considerations, ethical concerns, and the need for continuous education and adaptation within the legal profession.

The acquisition of CaseText by Thomson Reuters is discussed, with Pablo sharing his perspective on the strategic move and its potential to further expand and enhance CoCounsel’s capabilities and reach. He highlights the synergy between CaseText’s innovative approach and Thomson Reuters’ extensive resources and market presence, which together aim to drive the next wave of advancements in legal technology and research tools.

Finally, the episode explores future directions for generative AI in legal research, including the expansion of CoCounsel’s capabilities to encompass a wider range of legal tasks and its potential to transform the practice of law. Pablo’s enthusiasm for the possibilities ahead underscores the significant impact that generative AI is set to have on the legal industry, promising to revolutionize how legal professionals interact with information and conduct research.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert
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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠ and Eve Searls⁠

⁠⁠Transcript

Continue Reading Pablo Arredondo on the One-Year Anniversary of CoCounsel

On a special “on location” episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert sits down with ⁠vLex⁠’s ⁠Damien Riehl⁠ for a hands-on demonstration of the new generative AI tool called Vincent AI. While at the ⁠Ark KM⁠ Conference, Riehl explains that vLex has amassed a huge legal dataset over its 35 year history which allows them to now run their own large language models (LLM). The recent merger between vLex and Fastcase has combined their datasets to create an even more robust training corpus.

Riehl demonstrates how Vincent AI works by having it research a question on trade secret law and employee theft of customer lists. It retrieves relevant cases, statutes, regulations, and secondary sources, highlighting the most relevant passages. It summarizes each source and provides a confidence rating on how well each excerpt answers the initial question. Vincent AI then generates a legal memorandum summarizing the relevant law. Riehl explains how this is more trustworthy than a general chatbot like ChatGPT because it is grounded in real legal sources.

Riehl shows how Vincent AI can compare legal jurisdictions by generating memorandums on the same question for California, New York, the UK, and Spain. It can even handle foreign language sources, translating them into English. This allows for efficient multi-jurisdictional analysis. Riehl emphasizes Vincent AI’s focus on asking straightforward questions in natural language rather than requiring complex prompts.

Looking ahead, Riehl sees potential for Vincent AI to leverage external LLMs like Anthropic’s Claude model as well as their massive dataset of briefs and motions to generate tailored legal arguments statistically likely to persuade specific judges on particular issues. He explains this requires highly accurate tagging of documents which they can achieve through symbolic AI. Riehl aims to continue expanding features without requiring lawyers to become AI prompt engineers.

On access to justice, Riehl believes AI can help legal aid and pro bono attorneys handle more matters more efficiently. He also sees potential for AI assistance to pro se litigants to promote fairer outcomes. For judges, AI could help manage pro se cases and expedite decision-making. Overall, Riehl is optimistic about AI augmenting legal work over the next two years through ongoing improvements.

Riehl discusses vLex’s new Vincent AI system and its ability to efficiently research legal issues across jurisdictions and across languages. He provides insight into the technology’s development and potential while emphasizing understandable user interaction. The conversation highlights AI’s emerging role in legal services to increase productivity, insight, and access to justice.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ |  ⁠Spotify⁠ | YouTube (NEW!)

Links:

vLex ⁠Vincent AI⁠

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠Transcript

⁠
Continue Reading vLex’s Damien Riehl on Examining vLex’s New Vincent AI (TGIR Ep. 227)

This week on The Geek in Review podcast Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert featured guests Colin Levy, Ashley Carlisle, and Dorna Moini discussing Levy’s recently published book “Handbook of Legal Tech.” Levy edited the book and contributors included Moini, Carlisle’s CEO, Tony Thai, and many more legal technology experts. The book provides an overview of key technologies transforming the legal industry like automation, AI, blockchain, document automation, CLM, and more.

Levy shared how he ended up editing the book, describing it as “herding cats” to get busy experts to contribute chapters. He wanted the book to serve as a comprehensive introduction to legal tech, with each chapter written by leaders in the various subject matter areas. Carlisle and Moini explained their motivations for taking time out of their demanding schedules to write chapters – spreading knowledge to help move the industry forward and impart insights from their work.

The guests reflected on their favorite parts of the experience. Levy enjoyed bringing together the community and seeing different perspectives. Carlisle appreciated being able to consolidate information on contract lifecycle management. Moini was proud to contribute right before having a baby. Lambert highlighted Levy juggling this book and writing his own solo book on legal tech stories from the front lines.

The guests offered advice to law students and lawyers looking to learn about and leverage legal tech. Carlisle emphasized starting with an open mind, intentional research, and reading widely from legal tech thought leaders. Moini recommended thinking big but starting small with iterative implementation. Levy stressed knowing your purpose and motivations to stay focused amidst the vast array of options.

Lambert prompted the guests to identify low-hanging fruit legal technologies those new to practice should focus on. Levy pointed to document automation and AI. Moini noted that intake and forms digitization can be a first step for laggards. Carlisle advised starting small with discrete tasks before tackling advanced tools.

For their forward-looking predictions, Carlisle saw AI hype fading but increasing tech literacy, Levy predicted growing focus on use and analysis of data as AI advances, and Moini forecasted a rise in online legal service delivery. The guests are excited about spreading awareness through the book to help transform the legal industry.

LINKS:

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ |  ⁠Spotify⁠ | YouTube (NEW!)

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:Continue Reading Colin Levy, Dorna Moini, and Ashley Carlisle on Herding Cats and Heralding Change: The Inside Scoop on the “Handbook of Legal Tech”

On this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert delve into how AI can transform legal writing with ClearBrief founder and CEO Jacqueline Schafer. As a former litigator, Schafer experienced firsthand the frustrating scramble to finalize briefs and prepare filings. She founded ClearBrief in 2020 to leverage AI to analyze documents and suggest relevant evidence and citations to streamline drafting.

ClearBrief integrates into Microsoft Word to align with lawyers’ existing workflows. By uploading case documents and discovery materials, the AI can pull facts and quotes directly from the record to support legal arguments in the brief. New features even generate chronologies and timelines from case files automatically. Schafer explains the AI doesn’t hallucinate text from scratch, avoiding ethical pitfalls. Rigorous security and confidentiality controls provide the trust needed to gain adoption at top law firms.

According to Schafer, attorneys now exhibit much greater openness to tailored AI tools that enhance productivity versus disrupting their workflows entirely. Younger associates and paralegals tend to be most enthusiastic about the technology while firm leadership lags. She believes empowering the next generation of legal professionals with AI will modernize law practice to better serve unmet needs.

Looking ahead, Schafer expects to expand ClearBrief’s features to assist paralegals along with corporate attorneys beyond litigation. By leveraging AI to handle tedious tasks like cite-checking, lawyers can focus their time on high-value analysis and strategy. With the aid of trusted AI writing assistants, attorneys can craft compelling briefs and filings more efficiently while still verifying the underlying sources.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ |  ⁠Spotify⁠ | YouTube (NEW!)

Contact Us: 

Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:Continue Reading Jacqueline Schafer on Writing Briefs at the Speed of AI: How ClearBrief is Transforming Legal Drafting

On this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert explore innovations in legal search with ⁠Paulina Grnarova⁠ and ⁠Yannic Kilcher⁠, co-founders of ⁠DeepJudge⁠. This semantic search engine for legal documents leverages proprietary AI developed by experts with backgrounds from Google and academic AI research.

As PhDs from ETH Zurich, Grnarova and Kilcher recognized lawyers needed better access to institutional knowledge rather than constantly reinventing the wheel. DeepJudge moves beyond traditional keyword searches to a deeper integration of search and generative AI models like GPT-3. Partnerships provide financial support and key insights – advisors include execs from Recommind and Kira Systems while collaborations with law firms shape real-world product capabilities.

Discussing product development, Kilcher explains connecting search to language models allows generating summaries grounded in internal data without ethical or security risks of training individual models. Grnarova finds the core problem of connecting users to full knowledge translates universally across firms, though notes larger US firms devote more resources to knowledge management and data science teams.

When asked about the future of AI, Grnarova expresses excitement for AI and humans enhancing each other rather than replacing human roles. Kilcher predicts continued growth in model scale and capability, requiring innovations to sustain rapid progress. They aim to leverage academic research and industry experience to build AI that augments, not displaces, professionals.

DeepJudge stands out for its co-founder expertise and proprietary AI enabling semantic search to tap into institutional knowledge. Instead of reinventing the wheel, lawyers can find relevant precedents and background facts at their fingertips. As Kilcher states, competitive advantage lies in accumulated know-how – their technology surfaces this asset. The future of DeepJudge lies in combining search and generative models for greater insights.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ |  ⁠Spotify⁠ | YouTube (NEW!)

Links:

Contact DeepJudge: ⁠info@deepjudge.ai⁠⁠

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Threads: @glambertpod or @gebauerm66

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠Transcript⁠

Continue Reading Paulina Grnarova and Yannic Kilcher from DeepJudge.AI: Unlocking Institutional Knowledge: How AI is Transforming Legal Search (TGIR Ep. 224)

This episode of The Geek in Review podcast provides an in-depth look at how the AI assistant Paxton, created by Tanguy Chau and Mike Ulin, is transforming legal work. The hosts speak with the founders of Paxton to explore the pain points their technology aims to solve and how generative AI can enhance lawyers’ capabilities.

Tanguy and Mike discuss their backgrounds in AI, regulatory compliance, venture capital, and management consulting. This diverse experience informed their vision for Paxton as an AI assistant specifically built for legal and compliance professionals. They explain that Paxton is trained on millions of legal documents and regulations, allowing it to search this vast knowledge and retrieve highly relevant information rapidly. A key feature they highlight is Paxton’s accuracy in citing sources, with every sentence linked back to the original text.

One of the key features of Paxton is that it can automate repetitive, low-value legal work to make lawyers more efficient. Tanguy notes that tasks like reviewing thousands of sales contracts clause-by-clause or compiling 50-state surveys that once took weeks can now be done by Paxton in minutes. Mike discusses Paxton’s advanced document comparison capabilities that go beyond keyword matching to understand meaning and intent. This allows quick, substantive analysis of contracts, marketing materials, and more.

Exploring the future, Mike predicts that like software developers, lawyers who embrace AI will become much more productive. But higher-level strategic thinking will remain uniquely human. Tanguy shares an analogy of a human on a bicycle outpacing a condor, the most efficient animal. He believes combining human creativity with AI tools like Paxton will enable radically new levels of efficiency and capability.

Paxton.AI’s Tanguy and Mike make a compelling case that AI-powered tools such as Paxton will fundamentally transform legal work. By automating repetitive tasks, AI will free lawyers to focus on high-value, client-facing work. Overall, this episode provides great insights into how generative AI may soon become indispensable for legal professionals seeking to improve their productivity and capabilities.

As a special treat, we wrap up the interview with a demonstration of Paxton.AI’s capabilities. (YouTube only)

Links:

• ⁠Paxton AI (try the Beta for free)⁠

• ⁠Forbes Article: Unlocking The 10x Lawyer: How Generative AI Can Transform The Legal Landscape⁠

• ⁠Using Generative AI to analyze the 45 page Trump Indictment using Paxton AI⁠

• ⁠Unveiling Paxton AI’s Newest Features: Boolean Composer and Document Compare⁠

• ⁠Instantly Analyzing the Congressional UFO Hearing with Generative AI powered by Paxton AI⁠

Transcript:Continue Reading Paxton.AI’s Tanguy Chau & Michael Ulin: How AI Allows Legal Work to Soar to New Heights (TGIR Ep. 220)

It is pretty apparent that we are in a super Hype Cycle when it comes to AI tools like ChatGPT, but for many of us in the legal profession, we’re not used to reaching this point of the cycle at the same time as the rest of the world. Because things are happening so fast, we wanted to bring in someone like Colin Lachance from Jurisage to talk about how they are integrating Generative AI tools into their products.
Greg was going down an AI rabbit hole on Twitter this week when Colin mentioned his own project he was launching. Jurisage’s tool, MyJr (pronounced “My Junior”) is part of a joint venture between Jurisage and AltaML, and is designed to change how researchers access information by allowing the AI tool to synthesis and read cases as the researchers search and analyze the information. Rather than opening up web browser tab after tab and scanning cited cases for relevant information, the idea behind MyJr is to have it quickly answer that information for you. If you need to know what the relevant arguments are from each side in Smith v. Jones, as MyJr to pass that along to you. Ask it a plain language question, get a quick and plain language answer.
Lachance is working to use the GPT 3.5 tool to pass along cases and create what he calls “guardrails” with the cases so that the prompt and the results limit themselves to the case itself. This protects the researcher from the AI “creating” the answer from all the non-relevant information it has collected in its large language model of machine learning. Lachance has additional goals for using AI within Jurisage’s data, but he’s focused tools like MyJr establishing trust with those using it for researching Canadian, and soon US caselaw.
The MyJr product works as a browser extension and identifies Canadian and US case law citations on any web page. It delivers a preview into key details about the cited case, and a link to a free full-text version, in a popup when the user hovers over the citation. Clicking through to a “more insights” dashboard reveals additional detail as well as access to the upcoming “Chat with a case” feature (Feb 20th for Canadian case, a month later for US). While the paid version of the dashboard won’t officially launch until late March, user can get unlimited pre-sale access today as well as secure a future 50% discount option for a one-time payment of $7.

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More information on Jurisage and MyJr can be found here:
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Transcript

Continue Reading Colin Lachance on Jurisage’s MyJr and How He’s Looking at AI to Assist in the Synthesis and Reading of Legal Cases (TGIR Ep. 190)