Following the news (see previous article) of the launch of Coheso, here is an exclusive Artificial Lawyer interview with co-founder and CEO, Ned Gannon, covering the use of a mix of LLMs, why Coheso will be effective, CLM systems, and how genAI compares to the original eBrevia NLP/ML experience.
– What LLMs are you using for Coheso?
Our Agentic AI Pipeline leverages a mix of AI technologies including GPT-4, Llama 3, and Claude Haiku, chosen for their specific strengths. We maintain flexibility by not being tied to any AI providers through investments or partnerships, allowing us to adapt quickly to changes in the AI landscape. These models are further enhanced by our legal retriever, which expertly manages and retrieves information from extensive repositories of legal documents as well as other proprietary technology.
– Would it be right to say this is a matter management system?
I view Coheso as broader than a matter management system and with a different value proposition. While matter management systems are great for organizing tasks around complex legal matters, Coheso is also able to automatically address the routine, repetitive, and distracting one-off requests and questions that are constantly bombarding in-house legal and compliance teams.
The Coheso platform meets business users where they’re at (Slack, email, etc.) by providing AI-generated responses to questions based on the company’s policies, contracts, or other documentation together with evidence either directly back to business users or to legal and compliance personnel who may choose to review and edit the AI responses first. Tasks that require more extensive attorney involvement are moved into a simple and intuitive work management system where they are automatically delegated based on subject matter and can be prioritized and tracked.
The Coheso platform ensures that all tasks, whether they be routine or more complex, are tackled efficiently, leveraging AI where appropriate, while simultaneously providing actionable insights and data to legal departments and the broader organization.
– How does this connect to CLM systems?
Coheso is complementary to rather than competitive with CLM systems. Many of the tasks Coheso addresses are unrelated to contracts. That said, we are actively exploring integrations with CLMs to provide a comprehensive and seamless experience for those clients who already have a CLM in place or are evaluating CLM options in tandem with the Coheso offering.
– How much investment have you received already?
We’re not planning to share the amount we’ve raised at this time but are happy to say our investors include the venture capital firms Crew Capital, Character, and Firsthand Alliance as well as Carnegie Mellon University, and angel investors such as Thomas Barothy. All of our investors have brought significant value to the company outside of the capital itself, and we were intentional when deciding who to partner with. In fact, we ended up turning away a fairly sizeable amount of additional investment to limit dilution at this early stage.
– eBrevia was a pioneer in the NLP/ML space for legal, how far do you feel genAI-based legal tech tools will transform the market?
It’s really fun to see what a different world it is between when eBrevia started in 2012 and where legal tech is today. In those early days, other than Technology Assisted Review (TAR) in eDiscovery and a few other startups, AI in legal was virtually unheard of. We spent a lot of time at the start of eBrevia trying to convince attorneys that AI could help them practice more accurately and efficiently.
Despite the progress the legal tech industry has had over the last twelve years, I have no doubt that it is going to pale in comparison to what we’ll see over the next twelve or even the next three.
The increased capabilities of GenAI-based legal tech tools, including the significant increase in the context window (number of words that a model can take as input) and explainability advances, have expanded and will continue to expand the market for AI-based use cases in legal. This will impact where work is being done (in-house, law firms, ALSPs, etc.) and what work is being done by humans at all.
Thanks Ned! Looking forward to seeing you and the Coheso team at Legal Innovators California conference in San Francisco, June 4 and 5
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Coheso will be at the Legal Innovators California conference in San Francisco, June 4 and 5
The new wave of legal AI and how it will change our sector will be central to the Legal Innovators California conference, Jun 4 + 5.
The event will take place in San Francisco with Day One focused on law firms, and Day Two on inhouse and legal ops. We have many great speakers attending the event, along with a group of pioneering legal tech companies and service providers – you can see some more about our speakers here. It will be two great days of education and inspiration! Join us!
For ticket information, please see here. Don’t miss out on what will be a great event.
