Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mike: open-source legal AI

mikeoss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 123 posts

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#61

Post by ford »

somewhatgoated wrote: post #55
jcfrei wrote: post #50

I believe this is the direction enterprise software is generally going. An open-source base with a very permissive license that then each company can adapt (with claude, codex, etc.) for it's own needs. It's either running it on it's own infrastructure or in hosted environment by the author. I've built a similarly extensible codebase for an ERP: https://github.com/lambdadevelopment/lambda-erp

How will developers of this software get paid in this model?

I think a more realistic model is not fully open source, but apps with extremely open/flexible APIs and data models that allow arbitrary front-ends (likely with a default one provided by whoever provides the API). Kind of like Stripe's model, but the audience of "developers" is bigger since anyone can be a "developer" with Claude Code

Or maybe it will be the more established open source model where the code is free but the maintainers offer hosting/some default product

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#64

Post by bluefirebrand »

ford wrote: post #60
jcfrei wrote: post #50

I believe this is the direction enterprise software is generally going. An open-source base with a very permissive license that then each company can adapt (with claude, codex, etc.) for it's own needs. It's either running it on it's own infrastructure or in hosted environment by the author. I've built a similarly extensible codebase for an ERP: https://github.com/lambdadevelopment/lambda-erp

I'm really interested in how LLMs will enable more customizable, personal software. Our PMs & Designers are writing a lot of code now, and our engineers are spending time figuring out how to make a system that's easy for PMs & designers to extend/add to. It's not a big leap to apply that model to a company and its customers, where the company builds a well-abstracted, easily extensible base that 1) Customers can easi…

> Our PMs & Designers are writing a lot of code now, and our engineers are spending time figuring out how to make a system that's easy for PMs & designers to extend/add to

Sounds like your developers are relegating themselves to being review monkeys instead of developers

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#65

Post by xrd »

IANAL, obviously!

One question I have about legal AI startups/products, is how do they maintain or improve upon billing practices of law firms?

Having worked with a bunch of lawyers, I know that I'm often paying $500/hr to that firm. That work is actually done by a paralegal who is being paid $40/hr, and then I'm being billed through the partner for an extra $460/hr. This is a gross oversimplification, but you get the point.

If the partner needs to bring in $5M a year, how does any addition of tech solve that?

If I'm the customer of the law firm, I would love to have a more cost efficient way to get legal advice. But, I don't understand how those incentives are matched by the partner? I don't really think they want a more efficient result for their customers, they want a better way to get more billable hours. Adding "tech efficiency solutions" does not solve that issue at all.

Inevitably, customers will use LLMs on their own, and as people have noted, lose attorney client privilege (and often get hallucinated bad advice). There will probably be some very comical court room dramas when people try to represent themselves with an LLM on their shoulder.

Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about the legal world that will make a major law firm adopt this tech? I feel like there are some strong reasons they will universally avoid moving in this direction. Long term it will win and there will be blood on the floor, but why would any large firm adopt this stuff right now?

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#66

Post by ford »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #64
ford wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really interested in how LLMs will enable more customizable, personal software. Our PMs & Designers are writing a lot of code now, and our engineers are spending time figuring out how to make a system that's easy for PMs & designers to extend/add to. It's not a big leap to apply that model to a company and its customers, where the company builds a well-abstracted, easily extensible base that 1) Customers can easi…

> Our PMs & Designers are writing a lot of code now, and our engineers are spending time figuring out how to make a system that's easy for PMs & designers to extend/add to Sounds like your developers are relegating themselves to being review monkeys instead of developers

In a post Claude Code world that's the job of engineers - the engineering is designing good abstractions, scalable systems, and things that are easy to contribute to. This is what the highest leverage senior engineers have always done, the audience has just changed

Engineering has moved up another layer of abstraction (just like we moved past managing buffers & writing machine code)

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#67

Post by erispoe »

dahcryn wrote: post #37
kostarelo wrote: post #25

For a moment I thought it was some open-source LLM trained on legal. It's not, it's a web app wrapping major LLM providers and streamlining legal workflows, uploading documents, and having the LLM providers interact with them. Cool project regardless!

yeah I thought that was the USP of Legora and Harvey, so this is not the same thing at all, just surfing the brand recognition

Harvey doesn't have finetuned model anymore do they?

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#68

Post by jcfrei »

somewhatgoated wrote: post #55
jcfrei wrote: post #50

I believe this is the direction enterprise software is generally going. An open-source base with a very permissive license that then each company can adapt (with claude, codex, etc.) for it's own needs. It's either running it on it's own infrastructure or in hosted environment by the author. I've built a similarly extensible codebase for an ERP: https://github.com/lambdadevelopment/lambda-erp

How will developers of this software get paid in this model?

good question - some thoughts I had: hosting the model and maybe some review process. for example: you have the customer's employees telling llms about new features and then a dedicated review cycle on the hosting side makes sure it doesnt break anything and is secure, etc.

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#69

Post by jchurch1 »

This is complete vibe garbage.

go look at the auth - it's a call to supabase.

go look at the migrations - it's like 5 tables.

There is a real need in the space and a real opportunity for a solution like this but this is a complete nothing burger of what exists in the underlying code.

The requirements for this kind of product are extensive and complex. The shape of the data layer is complex and nuanced. Absolutely none of this is considered or implemented in the project but it sure is blowing up.

Re: Mike: open-source legal AI

#70

Post by piokoch »

xrd wrote: post #65

IANAL, obviously! One question I have about legal AI startups/products, is how do they maintain or improve upon billing practices of law firms? Having worked with a bunch of lawyers, I know that I'm often paying $500/hr to that firm. That work is actually done by a paralegal who is being paid $40/hr, and then I'm being billed through the partner for an extra $460/hr. This is a gross oversimplification, but you get th…

My guess is that capable lawyer who will be able to spot hallucination and figure out key stuff missed by AI will be satisfied to earn $500K a year, not $5M, so he will charge less. Those who charge $500/hr will simply extinct or will be a luxury used by very rich people for not particular reason, like the ones who buy other overpriced goods.
Post reply on HN