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To me it seems a lot of these old law firm partner uncles and aunties with FOMO are falling for verbose and fancy marketing and just buying wrappers of existing AI. Its like Xiaomi or Samsung charging a premium claiming that their OS is better, when fundamentally its just android with a skin aka theme with add ons.
I ask this because, one Techbro on my LinkedIn keeps yapping about his product's capabilities. And I always end up thinking to myself, what more can it do that a Claude or a Chatgpt or Deepseek can't do? Its just a question of the correct prompt. Are you paying a premium because your associates can't prompt? Its the same as not being able to use Westlaw and Manupatra.
I agree, you can train it on your law firm's database and make it use "Firm Formatting". But dear law firm uncle, do you know that you can self host an LLM which will keep your data safe AND DO THE SAME THING?? All for free!? i don't know what you're paying such a Bajillion premium dollars for.
I remember talking to a fellow some years back, his aim was to collect all law firm precedents - surreptitiously, and feed to his database and create his own AI tech. So, uncles be careful and make sure data sharing is ironclad. Get it audited and all.
Disclosure:
I'd like to say I haven't used any AI tech. But, I would also like to tell you that I am a seasoned corporate lawyer with about 9-10 PQE. I also am a tech "enthusiast", meaning at a basic level I can code SBCs like Arduino, esp32. I am comfortable with deploying linux servers, docker, self hosted softwares etc. I say this to let you know, that I do know my tech. I have been using Linux by myself since 2008.
Now, I also love Chatgpt, Deepseek, Claude etc., I use them a lot in daily life instead of google nowadays. I also use them to draft and find references etc.
Personally, I have not really used an AI Legal tool yet. I have found existing free options more than sufficient. Neither for drafting nor for legal research, it's unlikely that I will use it or need to use it in the future, given the trajectory of my life.
law firms need to stop buying into the snake oil that these "startups" sell, and invest in talent that allows them to develop their own homegrown solutions with much deeper integration. the first law firm to focus on developing their own solution with an internal startup of sorts will be the one to win.
They give me mid 2010s VC bubble era vibes when all sorts of shit business models got funded to Kingdom Come.