DecoverAI, a new genAI-based legal tech startup that formed only last year, has raised $2 million in a Seed funding round led by Leo Capital. The company focuses on automating tasks in legal disputes, (see more below).
The funds will be allocated to enhance the company’s GenAI capabilities, expand product features, grow the team, and invest in marketing and sales efforts to bring its solutions to a wider audience.
So, what is it developing? Here is how the Washington DC-based startup explained things: ‘Our goal is to build a comprehensive ‘Legal Brain’ – an intelligent AI system that encompasses the capabilities needed for real world legal workflows, including discovering evidence, combining that with research and even generating different strategies for narratives to assist legal professionals. This includes eDiscovery, legal research, and case strategy development, providing a seamless and integrated experience.’
OK, sounds interesting. But, let’s get down to fundamentals. Here is what they say it does:
- ‘eDiscovery: Ask questions through Motions, Briefs, and Court Documents. Allows users to interactively query and seek clarification on client and court documents using the power of Large Language Models.
- Legal research: DecoverAI’s AI-powered tool delivers rapid, context-aware legal research, helping you find key case law, statutes, and precedents instantly. Elevate your legal strategy with unparalleled speed and accuracy.
- Legal reasoning: The tool incorporates the IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion) method, a fundamental framework in legal reasoning. Generative Defense assists in clearly identifying legal issues, applying relevant rules, analyzing their application, and drawing well-supported conclusions. This structured approach ensures that your defense is logically sound and thoroughly prepared.’
All well and good, although we’ll need to see it in action and learn more about its handling of accuracy benchmarks to know how precise it is in its results.
This site also had a look at their Q&A section, which covered lawyer fears over the loss of billable hours. It’s worth repeating here as it’s one of the very few legal tech companies to address the ‘time-based legal model vs efficiency’ issue head on:
‘Question: If DecoverAI is saving us time and making us more efficient, how do we keep our billable hours up?
DecoverAI is designed to enhance your productivity and effectiveness, allowing you to achieve better outcomes for your clients while maintaining or even increasing your billable hours. Here’s how:
1. Efficiency Gains: By streamlining your eDiscovery and legal research processes and improving efficiency, DecoverAI enables your team to accomplish tasks more quickly and accurately. This means you can handle larger volumes of work in less time, freeing up additional hours for billable activities.
2. Focus on Higher-Value Tasks: With DecoverAI handling time-consuming tasks like data indexing, document review, and search, your team can allocate more time to higher-value activities that require human expertise, such as case strategy, legal analysis, and client consultation. This allows you to provide more comprehensive and effective legal services, leading to increased billable hours.
3. Uncover Valuable Insights: DecoverAI’s advanced analytics and insights capabilities enable you to uncover valuable information and insights that may have otherwise been overlooked. By leveraging these insights, you can deliver more value to your clients and identify new opportunities for billable work.
DecoverAI is not meant to replace billable hours, but rather enhance your productivity and effectiveness, empowering you to deliver superior legal services while maintaining or increasing your billable hours.’
Of course, this site would maintain that rather than working around the time-based system, firms should move beyond it to fixed fees, and then they’ll be able to maximize their use of technology and make more profits at the same time.
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So, there you go. Another new genAI-based legal tech company, this time focused on disputes. And also one that started in 2023.
Let’s end with a comment from Ravi Tandon, CEO of DecoverAI: ‘We are incredibly excited about the potential of DecoverAI to revolutionize the legal industry. Our goal is to empower the best attorneys in the fraternity with the immense power and capabilities of large language models, enabling them to significantly uplevel themselves against their competitors.’