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Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

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Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#11

Post by lelandfe »

dragonwriter wrote: post #8
treetalker wrote: post #7

This service likely violates rules against the unauthorized practice of law in many (most?) jurisdictions in the United States.

It uses the common for new and short-lived services (but, IIRC, not generally effective -- but don't trust me, see an actual lawyer) technique of using marketing language selling it in terms which describe legal advice, but then including a small print disclaimer at the bottom of the extremely long page saying that the analysis provided should not be treated as legal advice.

> businesses can now accelerate their contract review processes without sacrificing accuracy

Later:

> The contract analysis provided is generated by artificial intelligence systems and is not guaranteed to be correct

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#14

Post by dragonwriter »

jstarfish wrote: post #9

I don't mean to shit on your efforts here, but this is a terrible idea as-executed. You trained your model on contracts. Contracts are full of any abusive bullshit anybody thinks they can get away with. You needed to train this on actual law to see what clauses are even enforceable. As a worst-case example, I fed it a BDSM contract. (It was cute when it asked me to choose my role.) These are in no way legally enforce…

Yeah, did something similar with an actual colonial (18th Century) apprentice's indenture, with similar results. It did, however, flag some provisions as potentially legally problematic, so it clearly has some remote idea that there are legal limits on contracts. Specifically, it called out in the "Standard Practice Comparison":

"Prohibitions on Personal Activities The contract restricts personal activities like marrying and playing unlawful games. Today, such personal prohibitions would likely be deemed overly restrictive and unacceptable under employment law."

(OTOH, while recognizing that employment law was relevant, it didn't call out that the consideration from the employer for the 5-year employment period didn't include any financial compensation was both far out of standard practice, contrary to employment law, and, if you ignore the invalidity the way the AI apparently does, a pretty big thing the apprentice should take note of, noting instead that the room and board commitment was a big plus, so not giving it much credit here.)

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#15

Post by dragonwriter »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

Is there any reason why I should use this rather than using ChatGPT Plus directly to do this? What is the moat for this tool?

> Is there any reason why I should use this rather than using ChatGPT Plus directly to do this?

Well, when it turns out that this gives you bad advice, you've got a better chance of recovering damages from someone for unauthorized practice of law, compared to if you got the same bad advice by prompting ChatGPT yourself.

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#16

Post by JohnFen »

jacooper wrote: post #13
JohnFen wrote: post #12

This seems pretty risky to me, much like using AI for medical diagnosis. Why is this better than consulting an actual contract law attorney?

Because that costs too much money?

It's not that expensive, though. If you're regularly dealing with contracts complex enough that a solution like this has appeal, you probably also have a decent income and a couple hundred dollars won't hurt much. Missing, or misunderstanding, something in the contract can also cost a lot more than what an attorney would charge you to review the contract.

But to each their own. For me, using something like this is riskier than I'd be comfortable with.

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#17

Post by franga2000 »

jstarfish wrote: post #9

I don't mean to shit on your efforts here, but this is a terrible idea as-executed. You trained your model on contracts. Contracts are full of any abusive bullshit anybody thinks they can get away with. You needed to train this on actual law to see what clauses are even enforceable. As a worst-case example, I fed it a BDSM contract. (It was cute when it asked me to choose my role.) These are in no way legally enforce…

Props for the idea of giving it a BDSM contract, it's a great edgee, but from what you wrote, the tool answered exactly as advertised. It cut through the legal language and highlighted the unusually one-sided terms, as it says on the front page. The use-case I imagined from the marketing was finding sneaky terms that lawyers tried to hide in long and strangely-worded sentences or simply summarising the key points in an exhaustingly long contract that you just need tp quickly judge but don't really have negotiating power over (various EULAs and NDAs come to mind).

Analysing the enforcability or legality of the terms themselves is a task that needs to be fine-tuned to specific jurisdictions and circumstances. This would basically be an "AI lawyer", which is a completely different product and many people are already working on that.

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#18

Post by toomuchtodo »

jacooper wrote: post #13
JohnFen wrote: post #12

This seems pretty risky to me, much like using AI for medical diagnosis. Why is this better than consulting an actual contract law attorney?

Because that costs too much money?

Compared to the cost of a mistake of a potentially hallucinating robot? “The LLM was wrong” will not fix a breach of contract or similar legal mistake. The tools make an excellent job aid like an IDE assistant, but human review is still mandatory.

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#19

Post by dragonwriter »

Ryner001 wrote: post #5
JohanCutych wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like less work on prompting but yeah, curious to know what are the next steps and how its going to be better than GPT

We've really put in the work tweaking the prompts to save you the hassle. It's quick, free, and gets straight to the point. Right now, it's a basic MVP just to show that the idea works and to start chatting with some initial users. We've got plenty of ideas for making it better and adding new stuff, but we really want to hear from users first before diving into our own idea pool.

> Right now, it's a basic MVP just to show that the idea works and to start chatting with some initial users.

Its not the first service of this type; Lots of firm offer AI (LLM-specifically)-based services assisting lawyers with contract review and other similar tasks, and Donotpay.com offered similar services to the public, billing its offering as a "Robot Lawyer", before narrowing its offerings under a storm of dubious media attention, government investigations (some involving potential criminal charges), and the beginnings of private litigation relating to unauthorized practice of law.

I don't see why this would go any differently.

Re: Show HN: Docu – Never sign a sketchy contract again. GPT-4 contract review

#20

Post by codingdave »

The entire section under the heading of "Legal Review - Your Shield in a Sea of Words" just seems way too close to: "Trust us, this AI is going to give you better legal advice better than actual attorneys."

This may be an ironic question, but have you consulted any attorneys on your risk of running a tool such as this? Seems like this is one of those things where your edge cases will be company-killing lawsuits. If not criminal charges.

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