[fellerts]

Who is the target audience for something like this? I'm not sure anybody is going to pay to have Apple's ToS simplified before clicking "agree". On the other hand, if you are squinting at a contract that actually matters, I don't think a service like this gives sufficient understanding of what all that legalese would actually mean if shit hits the fan. For example, changing the applicable law in a contract can yield wildly different interpretations without changing a word in the contract iself. This is why you should seek professional help when in doubt.

You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc from a company who "does not guarantee that the stuff on the website is good or works"? IANAL but I don't think so.

[NoboruWataya]

> You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc from a company who "does not guarantee that the stuff on the website is good or works"? IANAL but I don't think so.

If you are conversing with your own lawyer, you should be getting your summary from them, as that way you can be fairly sure it's correct (and you can probably sue them if it's not). That's part of a lawyer's job, explaining the law to their clients.

If you are conversing with someone else's lawyer, and you don't have your own lawyer, you are dangerously close to relying on this software for legal advice, which, given how confidently incorrect AI can be, could end in tears.

[fnordpiglet]

I assume lawyers could benefit from a tool that can summarize a large document rapidly. They’re often faced with thousands of pages of documents, and in large class actions possibly hundreds of thousands to millions.

[traceroute66]

> I assume lawyers could benefit from a tool that can summarize a large document rapidly. They’re often faced with thousands of pages of documents, and in large class actions possibly hundreds of thousands to millions.

That tool is a human called a Junior Associate.

And, no, you cannot replace a Junior Associate with AI for the reasons already outlined by @kkielhofner below. TL;DR: context... Junior has it. AI doesn't and will never do.

[alexdoesstuff]

I imagine for use cases such as class action there may be a place for AI to effectively extract information from hundreds or thousands of similar but slightly different contracts. Same goes for other such situations, such as commercial landlords with significant rent portfolios, investors/banks with loan terms, or even investors more easily understanding the difference between various bond and/or loan terms.

One of the key advantages of the recent advances in AI/ML to me is that it allows users to more efficiently extract unstructured information.

[bronco21016]

I’m a unionized employee who is currently waiting on finalized legal language for a new contract.

A lot of my time will be spent reviewing a diff between the current agreement and the proposed agreement but it’s a 500 page document. I might give this product a try just to see what it spits out. I could see this being incredibly useful if it could write a plain language, non-biased, summary of changes.

[muttantt]

A 4 page document prompted me for a $50 payment.

Good luck running 500 pages through this thing...

[kkielhofner]

The pricing is absolutely disconnected-from-reality wild.

At worst a junior associate at $BIGFIRM would review a document of that length with an understanding of issues specific to your situation, governing law/locality, etc for somewhere around $100 AND this would include a redlined response with suggested edits, annotations, any questions, etc.

A local, friendlier more SMB or startup catering attorney/smaller firm would likely look at a bunch of these for free or close to it.

In short the pricing needs to be at least 1/10 what it is currently so it can (at best) serve as a novelty, a basic filter to a series of potential agreements, etc.

[freejazz]

How much do you think they charge for associate time at a biglaw firm? It's well above $400/hr.

[kkielhofner]

I've worked with (and paid invoices from) several top-tier international > 500 attorney firms and if that's what you're effectively paying for junior associate time you need to look elsewhere.

For rate sheet time that's still too much and negotiating down legal invoices is just about the best use of time from a cost-benefit standpoint.

[freejazz]

They are probably not the top tier biglaw firm if they are charging less than $400/hr for associate time. S&C charges over $800/hr for associate time.

[mc32]

I would see if it could interpret Oxford commas appropriately such as in: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.htm...

[traceroute66]

> You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc

Indeed.

We all know what the medical profession quite rightly thinks about patients who turn up having (supposedly) self-diagnosed themselves with the help of Doctor Google.

[arcticfox]

> We all know what the medical profession quite rightly thinks about patients who turn up having (supposedly) self-diagnosed themselves with the help of Doctor Google.

And we all know what artists think about AI art...they hate it, because it's pretty good and it's going to take a lot of their jobs.

"Doctor Google" is pretty bad but there's absolutely no reason AIs can't get very good at most areas of medicine. For now doctors don't like Google because it gives bad results, but pretty soon they're going to start hating it because it gives good results.