Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
00:44:04 · Alessio Fanelli, Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang
[00:44:04] S2: Like, does that work? [00:44:05] S0: So, it's very different client to client, right? Yeah. But if it's a big client and they're super engaged, and they, like, want... They have all these streams of things that they would wanna do, or they already have... Typically, they have already tried to build something and it's failed, and they're like, this is what we... This is a problem that we'd like to solve, then we'll we'll basically staff them with legal engineers and a forward deployed engineer potentially, depending on what, you know, their thing is, and then we'll just be like, hey, these guys will come. They'll make you successful. They will sit with all your lawyers and teach them how to use it, and, like, figure out all the workflows that you have right now and and build them into Legora. And some of that will just be a legal engineer, and some of that will require a forward deployed engineer. [00:44:39] S2: What is that separation, I guess? If you could, like, talk about that a little bit. [00:44:43] S0: Legal engineers configure the product as a power user would. They don't write code. Yeah. Yeah. And a forward deployed engineer writes code into production, basically. I guess that's the that's the the [00:44:53] S2: What kind of background do the forward deployed engineers normally have? He said, like, [00:44:57] S0: Founders, regular engineers. Yeah. Old. Yeah. [00:45:00] S1: Yeah. D was your... Yeah, exactly. [00:45:02] S0: D was our first. [00:45:03] S1: Yeah. Two YC companies and worked on Search at Meta. [00:45:05] S0: Yeah. She's awesome. Yeah.
00:45:05 · Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang, Alessio Fanelli
[00:45:05] S0: Yeah. She's awesome. Yeah. [00:45:07] S1: Yeah. Okay. That's a high bar. She's great. [00:45:10] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. First first boost on the ground in The US. Yeah. [00:45:13] S2: So what are some examples of, I don't know, workflows or things that these people are building for the clients? Do you guys have like, oh, these are like, you know, there's a couple use cases that like all the law firms are like, you know, this is the first thing that our FTEs are gonna do when they go in. [00:45:28] S0: It's very different. Okay. Some core workflows everyone have, and we can just build in Legora, and that could be anything from like, this is how we handle these types of NDAs or whatever. [00:45:39] S1: And then [00:45:39] S0: it's just like, you activate it, and it's more like skill building really, for at least. And most of the FDs, that's more like there's something that we can't do yet, like we need some more flexibility in some of the primitives or whatever it might be, or we just have this really complex system that we need to integrate into, and then they'll go out there and they'll build the integration against our APIs and maybe expand our APIs or whatever to make that work. [00:45:59] S2: And how does the, like, legal structure work there? Because you said you guys yourselves can't even work on deals. Yes. Yeah. So, like, how do they work on client projects? [00:46:09] S0: You mean the law firms, how do they work on client projects? Sorry. [00:46:12] S2: How do your FTEs work on client projects
00:46:12 · Alessio Fanelli, Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang
[00:46:12] S2: How do your FTEs work on client projects [00:46:14] S0: if they touch the data still. So they'll just build the system. Okay. But they will also be onboarded like an employee sometimes. So, like, they might get a laptop and everything. [00:46:22] S2: Like, to the law? Yeah. [00:46:24] S0: Yeah. I guess they [00:46:24] S2: need to. Interesting. [00:46:26] S0: That doesn't happen very often because, like, usually they just build an integration and, like, kinda works, but they... Yeah. They can if they need to. [00:46:31] S2: And you only onboard FTEs into a customer, I'm assuming, if they're a certain size? [00:46:35] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And these two make sense. [00:46:38] S1: Because [00:46:38] S0: our FTEs can also work on core product. Right? So it's like, it's a constant prioritization Is [00:46:43] S1: there a rule, like, I guess, does every, like, know, so Palantir famously had like, you know, four days you spend on-site, one day you come back and contribute back to products, anything like that? [00:46:53] S0: No. We don't. Mean, to be fully honest with you guys, it's still it's still, you know, it's still early days in a lot of this. [00:47:00] S2: I mean, where do you see it headed, maybe over the next year?
00:47:00 · Alessio Fanelli, Jacob Lauritzen, Shawn Wang
[00:47:00] S2: I mean, where do you see it headed, maybe over the next year? [00:47:03] S0: I do think that it's gonna be more, maybe not exactly like Palantir, but like, we... I think we will have a larger in constant circulation group of FDs. That way we sit with a client for, like, two months or whatever to build out this one thing, then they go to the next one, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. But I I do imagine us rolling in with legal engineers and forward deployed engineers to, like, work on specific projects. [00:47:24] S1: Yeah. The API business is actually interesting, like you said, because that's another rule that you can have where you are CTO maintainer of the Legora platform. Yep. Right? We will offer everything that we have in the Legora web app as an API, and then you guys can use whatever. Is that a promise they make or? [00:47:43] S0: That's not something we're promising now. Yeah. We do have APIs that you can build against, but not the entire surface of the product. [00:47:49] S1: That's the curious thing, like, is that the strategy or... And obviously, some people will love it because I don't have to learn a new tool, I can just use the existing tool I have. Right? And then I just like install Legora, for example, with the Word document stuff. Other than that, you know, I I do think like then you have
00:47:49 · Shawn Wang, Jacob Lauritzen
[00:47:49] S1: That's the curious thing, like, is that the strategy or... And obviously, some people will love it because I don't have to learn a new tool, I can just use the existing tool I have. Right? And then I just like install Legora, for example, with the Word document stuff. Other than that, you know, I I do think like then you have [00:48:06] S0: to maintain it. Exactly. That's that's... So that's been my thing. That's why we've tried not to do it. We haven't we haven't had APIs. I mean, we started our APIs like six months ago or something. We fought it for a very long time, mostly because, yeah, I just don't wanna we we move so quickly in in the product that I don't wanna be, like, slowed down by having to maintain old API versions for, like, a data model that we've changed. I mean, now we're bigger and things are different, so now it's it's a cost that we can take on, but, like, when we're 20 engineers, it's just like, we move so quickly that we can't do this. [00:48:35] S1: I have toyed with this. It's just generally good for all companies to have a platform team and a product team, because the product team, you have one, but then you can easily spin up a second one as long as the platform is not super tied to product. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, a very simple one is web app mobile app. Right? Or, like, web app mobile app RTP and and then, like, you know, whatever, like, other other integrations. Then your FTEs just are one more client to the overall platform anyway.
00:48:35 · Shawn Wang, Jacob Lauritzen
[00:48:35] S1: I have toyed with this. It's just generally good for all companies to have a platform team and a product team, because the product team, you have one, but then you can easily spin up a second one as long as the platform is not super tied to product. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, a very simple one is web app mobile app. Right? Or, like, web app mobile app RTP and and then, like, you know, whatever, like, other other integrations. Then your FTEs just are one more client to the overall platform anyway. [00:49:01] S0: Yes. Yeah. And I think even the agent, you can think about it this way. There's like a harness team or that runs the agent, and then that you can even build a product around it with skills and automations and whatever else. [00:49:11] S1: Yeah. This is very famously the Amazon web services mandate, like Bezos was like, no more backdoor access. You only offer other teams your APIs, the same APIs you offer customers. If you don't have it, you build it. Yep. And then the customers also get it.