Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
00:18:53 · Shawn Wang, Jacob Lauritzen, Alessio Fanelli
[00:18:53] S1: So he wrote the application. [00:18:54] S0: He he wrote... Yeah. And my feedback to him was, people you have tried this a million times. Legal tech has never been a thing, because, like, there's no incentive for lawyers to to... Why would they be more efficient? They earn less money. Like, it doesn't make any sense. But I think the reason that lawyers do wanna adopt this is that they understand the gravity of the situation. They know that, like, the business model and everything is under pressure, and it's like they need to change because the competitive pressures are high. The billing model itself, I think, is also gonna change. We've we've already seen that, particularly in The US, that a bunch of stuff is actually being priced on, like, a project fee and not on an hours fee, particularly these sort of lower end stuff on the spectrum, like whatever it is, like small reviews and whatever. Some of it, honestly, is being done for free, and some of it is just being priced on a flat rate. [00:19:39] S2: So where is the money being made then? [00:19:41] S1: Is it Because [00:19:41] S0: of In the that strategic work. [00:19:43] S2: Yeah. I feel like a lot of what you guys talk about is M and A specifically, like, that's where all the money [00:19:47] S1: is That's
00:19:47 · Shawn Wang, Jacob Lauritzen
[00:19:47] S1: is That's [00:19:47] S0: just a very easy example. Oh, okay. Litigation is also... The big work still is there, and it's very valuable. And so, they'll spend lawyers will spend more of their time there. Client relationships also super important. Like a CRM? No. Just like spending more time with the client. Like, a lot of law firms will... Or historically have basically done stuff for free just to have that relationship with the client. [00:20:08] S1: Yeah. [00:20:08] S0: Yeah. And so now they can do that, but they don't have to lose a lot of [00:20:10] S1: money [00:20:11] S0: on [00:20:11] S1: doing it. I thought I thought I just... I have to pay the lawyer money just to be my friend. Like, in this... Like, isn't that the retainer thing? Yeah. Yeah. That's... You told me I can do it for free? [00:20:20] S0: Like... Yeah. You just have to find the right lawyers. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Or Latent Space has to grow much bigger. I don't know.
00:20:20 · Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang, Alessio Fanelli
[00:20:20] S0: Like... Yeah. You just have to find the right lawyers. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Or Latent Space has to grow much bigger. I don't know. [00:20:28] S1: Yeah. Yeah. We're trying. Know? Yeah. So... Okay. So so so you're saying, you know, obviously, the the strategic work and all these high value add is still there, but our legal fees are not going down. But you also said paralegals are not affected or, like, they're they're just shifting. And and this is something that we also did worry about with cognition. Like Yep. People worry about the phrasing of, like, we will replace your junior engineer because nobody likes that kind of statement. But in actual fact, yes, like, some some part of it does happen. Other junior engineers embrace it and then become more productive, [00:21:01] S0: which is exactly like you just said. [00:21:02] S1: So I guess, like, is is there a new term for this role or this this job that is taking... That is having traction with your customers? [00:21:10] S0: You mean the the Super AI Pill Junior Legal? Nothing I found yet. Maybe we should coin one. [00:21:15] S2: Isn't it legal a legal engineer? [00:21:17] S0: That's our... And and also now an industry thing. [00:21:20] S1: Yeah. Yeah. CSJDs. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:24] S0: And maybe that's the... There are those other people that are best positioned to do this kind of stuff.
00:21:24 · Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang
[00:21:24] S0: And maybe that's the... There are those other people that are best positioned to do this kind of stuff. [00:21:28] S1: I think the the the derogatory term of Meet Proxy, where you just like sit in front of the machine and type in something that someone else tells you to type, and then you repeat what the machine tells you to say. Yep. But, like, I do think a very good me proxy is just like... Well, you know agents very well, and you you know Legora very well. Yep. And you know how to, like like, this is my toolkit, and, you know, every industry has a toolkit. Yep. And I can use my tools to do the thing that you need me to do. [00:21:53] S0: But I I guess then you're not really a proxy. Right? You're actually just doing meaningful work. Yeah. [00:21:57] S1: It's it's just like I no longer... Like, you know... Well, I'll talk about tabular review because that... That's that's a thing that happens a lot. I have hundreds, thousands, millions, thou... And thousands. [00:22:06] S0: We do up to a million cells, I think. [00:22:08] S1: In a in a single... That's impressive. Yeah. We should talk about the the table and the windowing. Yeah. At you know, I... I've, like... I'm working on a big case. I have a million documents. I type it in. Usually, I'll throw a pair... Throw, like, a team of paralegals, lock them [00:22:20] S0: in the room. There till,
00:22:20 · Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang, Alessio Fanelli
[00:22:20] S0: in the room. There till, [00:22:21] S1: like, 4AM. Yeah. Like, that that doesn't need to happen. Right? Because now you can extract it and you can go and re prompt everything. Mhmm. So, like, yeah. And I think now I don't need a paralegal for that, but, like, a good, like, super AI pilled paralegal would do something else. You know? Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Whatever [00:22:37] S0: it is. They can do more stuff or, like, spend more time on the things that they, you know, didn't have time for before Or actually sleep. Who knows? No? [00:22:44] S2: I have a question. So you guys bought a company, Kira. Yes. Is that how you say it? Yep. And you you guys used your own product to do the M and A? [00:22:52] S0: Yes. We do that all time. [00:22:52] S1: So how did that work? Like, you talk a bit about that? Including... [00:22:55] S0: Yeah. No. That works great. We're doing that a lot. Our legal team is is... I mean, intake has been built with our legal team. Because right now, we have a Slack workflow where everyone's throws their stuff in, they're like, this is annoying. [00:23:04] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:23:05] S0: Right? And inefficient. So, it's like, great. We should lose Legora for that. [00:23:08] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, you know, what that process looked like?
00:23:08 · Alessio Fanelli, Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang
[00:23:08] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, you know, what that process looked like? [00:23:11] S0: Yeah. Absolutely. So, it's it's... We do a lot of the due diligence ourselves because we can do it with Tabular Review and other tools. We do still have counsel coming in to, like, assess certain risks or, like, you know, there's payroll, and so Zakura was simple because I was all in Sweden, but, know, we've done one in Canada and one in Australia, and so there's, like, payroll in Australia. Okay. Do we want someone to look at this, like, a bit more strategically? So there, we will still use Legora for the strategic part, they could actually be sparring partners and help us a lot on, like, how to figure out how to structure this the right way, but a lot of the more menial stuff, we could actually just do ourselves. So, like, a lot of the, yeah, a lot of the early things we would find, and we have had cases where we found something that's been, like, a red flag, and then we've we've pulled the brakes. Can you [00:23:55] S1: talk a little bit about any of these? No. Don't think so. Yeah. [00:23:59] S2: Alright. Early on, you said you... Your early customers were Swedish, like Swedish law firms. Have you seen a difference between working with, like, Swedish law versus, like, American law firms, that sort of thing? You guys are mostly working with, like, big, big law firms. [00:24:14] S0: Right? Well, we're also... Smaller law firms also. Oh, No. We we definitely started really, really big law firms, but 50 lawyers also use us and and get a