DISCO has launched a doc summary capability via its Cecilia genAI system. It will provide detailed insights into documents – including in foreign languages – leveraging a key aspect of LLM technology that is fast becoming a standard approach for many lawyers (see more on this new reality below).
It’s part of the wider Cecilia genAI facility that also includes a Q&A ability that allows users to ask natural language questions about the documents in their databases and receive detailed narrative responses along with specific source citations.
The listed eDiscovery company said: ‘One challenge attorneys…face is having to parse through long documents and foreign language text, which can slow down review and lead to key pieces of information being missed.’
They added that ‘users can easily…distil the key points from a long report or contract; receive a comprehensive breakdown of a foreign language document in plain English; or obtain a summary of a new hot document found by Cecilia Q&A before sharing it with the case team — all with one click of a button’.
Kevin Smith, DISCO’s Chief Product Officer, added: ‘Over a short period of time, DISCO has made tremendous strides in delivering market-ready generative AI solutions, and we continue to be laser-focused on building products that provide tangible value to our customers.’
The Bigger Picture
Overall, this is another example of a legal tech business providing genAI capabilities that some lawyers may have already experienced through other avenues, but in this case they can now use as part of an integrated offering.
It seems clear to this site that soon enough a very large proportion of all legal tech companies, across various segments, are going to be offering similar LLM-driven summaries, Q&A doc query functionality, and other now ‘standard’ genAI capabilities.
For example, you could use Microsoft Copilot to do a doc summary, or use a bunch of other legal tech tools that offer this via an LLM and that you may have in your tech stack already. So, why use one particular product to do something many others can do? One reason may simply be the benefits of avoiding ‘context switching’, i.e. moving from one UI/UX experience to another, or jumping from one tool’s set of data compliance controls to another.
In short, although LLM doc summaries will soon be ubiquitous across the legal (and wider) world, lawyers may still want to stay with DISCO on a matter, (or within another company’s platform) for such tasks. In short, whichever platform they use most may capture more of this type of LLM-driven activity simply because it’s easier to stay where you are, even if others offer something similar.
One thing is for sure, genAI is going to work its way into nearly every aspect of legal work and some LLM-driven abilities will become so standard there will be an abundance of choices as to which provider to use.