Looks like a prototype thrown together in a weekend hackathon. At fist glance, flimsy wrapper around a model with a chat interface, a few prompts, and some very basic RAG. What did I miss?
Mike: open-source legal AI
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Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#82We're in this weird in-between phase of the tech world where projects like this can now be put together in a few hours/days, but the audience of us HN folk are still trained on the idea that this is the result of months or years of work. We're going to have to re-train ourselves on what hard work looks like (and thus what should be upvoted here). I don't know whether the project's creator (@willchen96?) is a lawyer,…
Your comment (maybe accidentally) encodes the notion that hard work is the thing to appreciate.
I don’t actually care that much about the work having been hard - I care about the result being good.
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#83Legal professional here. This is NOT a replacement for proper legal AI assistants (e.g. Westlaw, in my jurisdiction). As far as I can tell, this is just a wrapper around regular LLMs i.e. nothing that you couldn't achieve yourself with the right prompting. What legal professionals actually pay for, and that is virtually impossible to replicate unfortunately, is to give the AI access to a legal database of case law. W…
> There's a reason why companies like Thomson Reuters have an oligopoly on these types of products, and can get away with charging thousands a year. They are the only ones with access to a comprehensive set of case law, and they've entrenched their position by having exclusive contracts with the law reporting companies.
I'm not in the legal field, but can someone explain that further? I would have expected that all case law is public access. Not necessarily easy access, but when a judge writes an opinion, why on Earth would that opinion be gated behind a corporation? What am I missing?
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#84We're in this weird in-between phase of the tech world where projects like this can now be put together in a few hours/days, but the audience of us HN folk are still trained on the idea that this is the result of months or years of work. We're going to have to re-train ourselves on what hard work looks like (and thus what should be upvoted here). I don't know whether the project's creator (@willchen96?) is a lawyer,…
Your comment (maybe accidentally) encodes the notion that hard work is the thing to appreciate. I don’t actually care that much about the work having been hard - I care about the result being good.
Totally fair point!
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#85Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#86IANAL, 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.
just a gentle reminder that most lawyers bill about 2200 to 2300 hours a year (at the top tier). Even at the crazy tier (no-life all work), lawyers generally don't exceed 3000 hours a year
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#87Legal professional here. This is NOT a replacement for proper legal AI assistants (e.g. Westlaw, in my jurisdiction). As far as I can tell, this is just a wrapper around regular LLMs i.e. nothing that you couldn't achieve yourself with the right prompting. What legal professionals actually pay for, and that is virtually impossible to replicate unfortunately, is to give the AI access to a legal database of case law. W…
> There's a reason why companies like Thomson Reuters have an oligopoly on these types of products, and can get away with charging thousands a year. They are the only ones with access to a comprehensive set of case law, and they've entrenched their position by having exclusive contracts with the law reporting companies. I'm not in the legal field, but can someone explain that further? I would have expected that all c…
Do not know about the US, but some countries publish some type of high profile cases but _only_ after anonimization for obvious privacy reasons.
To access the DB through the modern archive (well modern as new rules) you'd have to be an accredited professional passing through a few legal hardles and digital chancellor's office for each copy. It's like going to a bureaucracy^bureaucracy office.
Some early companies given their initial foothold were not required these checks so they were able to get hold of bigger archives (it's also important to remember often legislation or conformity is done through consulting or lobbying done by these entrenched players).
They can also build on the Data professionals themselves submit.
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#88Legal professional here. This is NOT a replacement for proper legal AI assistants (e.g. Westlaw, in my jurisdiction). As far as I can tell, this is just a wrapper around regular LLMs i.e. nothing that you couldn't achieve yourself with the right prompting. What legal professionals actually pay for, and that is virtually impossible to replicate unfortunately, is to give the AI access to a legal database of case law. W…
> There's a reason why companies like Thomson Reuters have an oligopoly on these types of products, and can get away with charging thousands a year. They are the only ones with access to a comprehensive set of case law, and they've entrenched their position by having exclusive contracts with the law reporting companies. I'm not in the legal field, but can someone explain that further? I would have expected that all c…
Yes, it sounds crazy and against the principle of open justice, but unfortunately this is the reality. Certainly in the UK which is my jurisdiction - and I believe in the US too although I don't know for sure.
In theory, any member of the public can obtain a judgment by applying for one at the court and paying a fee. That's fine if you just need a one-off judgment, don't mind paying the fee, and you're not in a hurry. It also assumes that you know which case you need.
For realistic legal research, you might need to wade through dozens of cases just to even know if any of them are relevant, you might have a deadline of tomorrow to get it done, and you might not want to pay that fee for a bunch of cases that you aren't going to end up needing. Only a company which already has a comprehensive copy of virtually every important case can help you here.
A typical workflow for a complex piece of legal research might look like this:
1. You need to research a legal topic.
2. Do some Googling, or chat to your LLM, to get a rough overview and some pointers for further research (but don't completely rely on what you find).
3. Read some professional content (e.g. Practical Law articles relevant to the topic, or a legal textbook).
4. Read the relevant legislation.
5. Use a legal database to download all the cases you found from steps 2 and 3 which seem like they might be relevant.
6. Use a legal database to download all the cases which cite the relevant legislative provisions you found in step 4 and seem like they might be relevant.
7. Use the legal database to confirm that those cases are still good law (not overridden or criticised by a later case).
8. Skim read them, discard those that turned out to obviously not be relevant.
9. Read the remaining ones more closely.
10. Note any useful-looking cases which are cited in the ones from step 9, and recursively work your way through those cases as well.
Relying on court-provided copies of judgments won't realistically help you with most of these steps.
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#89This doesn't have most of the important features of Harvey or Legora. This is just a vibe coded project that escaped showlim. Urgh.
Re: Mike: open-source legal AI
#90IANAL, 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.
I'm not saying a partner earns $5M, but that he is responsible for bringing that into the firm.
I just don't understand how decision makers at a big firm are going to say yes to tech solutions when those solutions will kill the goose roaming their hunting grounds.