DraftWise, the contract drafting and negotiation pioneer, is leveraging the genAI search capabilities of Cohere to expand what it can do for its law firm clients.
James Ding, CEO at DraftWise, told Artificial Lawyer: ‘They focus on enterprise search. Cohere’s retrieval is state of the art and so that is increasing the accuracy of our retrieval.’
And this matters, as a central part of what DraftWise does is find previous examples, or related examples, of clauses in a firm’s prior work product, then surfaces those that are most relevant or useful, and that allows a lawyer to be more efficient in how they draft – and draft with the language they really want to use.
Ding noted that they need to be able to search a huge volume of documents to find the right contract information for users, so Cohere, which ‘uses agentic workflows [with] self-evaluation’ and is designed to work on an enterprise scale is a good fit for their needs.
He also stressed that this is not just a case of a simple find ‘X’ demand, but can mean helping a lawyer to search for related key concepts, or to rephrase language in a clause, or even to ‘reverse engineer redlines’ – all of which taps what generative AI can do well.
Narrow Focus + Growth Strategy
The majority of their clients are in the US, but they are also now expanding in the UK with a small number of larger firms here using the company’s software. In the US clients include Orrick and Gunderson. Mishcon de Reya, which incubated the company in its MDR Lab some time ago, is a customer in the UK, among others.
They have a staff of around 50 now and earlier this year gained $20m in a Series A funding round.
Meanwhile, above and beyond the addition of genAI to deepen what DraftWise can do in terms of helping lawyers to find what they need to draft well, Ding is adamant that their focus is on their core purpose and they will not widen it out by using a convergence strategy driven by an LLM multi-skill approach.
They simply don’t want to offer AI skills that they are not expert in, something that Ding believes some companies may end up doing by offering a very wide range of LLM-based capabilities. He added they will not try to compete with those multifaceted companies either, and instead double down on the development of their product and make it even better.
‘We are very bespoke. We’ve picked a few workflows and the other ones we won’t cover,’ he stated.
That’s a clear signal that not everyone wants to try the convergence strategy, and instead some, like DraftWise, will go all-in on becoming a leading point solution that will stand out from the crowd.
They will also keep focusing on larger law firms and not seek out inhouse clients, or smaller law firms. The logic is that DraftWise helps top firms with highly complex contracts and that’s where they can add the most value.
‘There is more momentum now,’ Ding explained. ‘In the last two years growth has accelerated. [But] we will focus on what we are good at.’
‘Doing a lot for everyone means not being perfect for anyone,’ he concludes.
And in a world where the legal tech market is shifting so rapidly because of genAI, having a clear strategy is one of the most important things.