Here’s some of the top news stories you may have missed this week, all in today’s AL NIBs.
Caddi Raises $5m For AI-Driven Process Automations
Caddi has raised $5m in seed funding to offer what it calls a ‘record-to-code’ platform which ‘watches how [you] work – whether it’s client intake, document management, or billing – and transforms those actions into fully functional, API-driven automations’.
Their tagline is: ‘If you can record it, we can automate it’. An interesting approach indeed.
Co-founder & CEO Alejandro Castellano, said: ‘Our ‘automation by demonstration’ approach means professionals can train Caddi just like they would a new hire. No coding, no IT team, no workflow disruption. Just show Caddi what you do, and it does the rest.’
For example, it can help to build custom automations for:
- Client Onboarding
- Email Management
- Document Organization
- Data Entry
- Billing & Invoicing
Of course, the proof is in the automated pudding…..But it looks promising.
You can find more about the company here.
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ContractPodAi + Epiq Partner Together For GenAI
CLM company ContractPodAi is partnering with Epiq, with the former’s Leah genAI assistant now offered as part of Epiq’s multi-capability Service Cloud. Moreover, Epiq will act as an implementation partner for the adoption of the AI system.
The move follows other partnerships by the CLM business, including with KPMG, PwC and Integreon.
Sarvarth Misra, CEO and co-founder of ContractPodAi, said: ‘By embedding Leah into Epiq’s ecosystem, together we aren’t just improving efficiency – we’re fundamentally changing how legal work gets done. Leah will help clients automate complex processes, make informed decisions, and scale their operations with unprecedented speed and accuracy.’
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Startup Altumatim Launches ‘Story-Driven’ AI Dispute Analysis
US-based startup, Altumatim, has launched altumatimOSTM, which provides a ‘story-driven’ approach to dispute analysis.
Key features include:
- ‘Story-Based Intelligence: By understanding a case’s narrative context, altumatimOS delivers more accurate and relevant results than keyword-based approaches.
- Autonomous Investigation: The platform’s super-agent orchestrator deploys multiple AI agents to analyze datasets comprehensively, forming independent insights about the most relevant information to each case.
- Collaborative Co-Authoring: The super-agent works alongside users to continuously update and refine case narratives as new evidence is discovered.’
If you look beyond the jargon, basically this is a tool that focuses on case narratives. But, may be of interest.
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Small GenAI Benchmark Study Compares vLex vs OpenAI o1
A new, but quite limited, benchmark study from the law schools at the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan found that Vincent AI from vLex ‘hallucinated significantly less than OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model’.
The study compared legal tasks performed by upper-level law students using Vincent AI and OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model.
Results from the report found that ‘AI assistance significantly boosts productivity in five out of six tested legal tasks’. And that ‘RAG technology, such as that used by Vincent AI, does indeed reduce hallucinations. In fact, we identified fewer hallucinations in assignments completed with Vincent AI (3 total) than in those completed without any AI assistance at all (4). By contrast, assignments completed with o1-preview exhibited a substantially higher number of hallucinations (11).’
So, not a massive study, but the results help to establish that 1) genAI is useful for legal work, and 2) legal-orientated tools – for now – perform better than generalist genAI approaches.
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Addleshaws Signs Up With Legora
After a busy few weeks for Legora, Addleshaw Goddard has now announced they are bringing them aboard. They’ve had a name change, Bird & Bird brought them in full-time after a pilot, and Mishcon de Reya has started a pilot as well.
One example of a use case Addleshaw gave was this:
‘Legora’s Tabular Review tool enables the bulk upload of documents to answer specific questions or extractions and can analyse up to 100,000 documents in parallel. The speed of this feature allows the team to add queries immediately, building out complex reviews within an easy-to-use and collaborative interface.’
Michael Kennedy, Head of Innovation & Legal Technology – R&D at Addleshaw Goddard, said: ‘A combination of the speed of development and responsiveness of the platform and the positive collaboration with Legora’s team was key to our decision.’
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Ontra Tackles Contract Negotiation
Ontra has announced the launch of Accord for contract negotiation, which ‘eliminates manual work associated with contract negotiation and management’. It allows you to leverage preferred negotiating positions and precedents; and get real-time visibility into the status of ongoing negotiations, enabling greater collaboration across teams.
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Intapp Launches Client Relationship-Focused DealCloud Activator
Intapp has launched DealCloud Activator, which ‘surfaces real-time insights and actionable nudges that guide professionals to proactively support client relationships throughout the entire client lifecycle — without disrupting their daily routines’.
Beyond the word salad, here is what it can do:
- Relationship and opportunity signals: Changes in key relationships — such as job changes, cooling contacts, and company news — are proactively fed to users with AI-driven signals and insights.
- Behavioral nudges: Timely, relevant reminders on best next actions are integrated into daily workflows to foster consistent engagement.
- Tech stack integration: Integration with email, LinkedIn, and other tools lets users act on nudges directly from the alert.=
- Holistic data pictures: Connecting third-party data with proprietary firm history, ensures that recommendations are built off a rich, unique set of data specific to each professional and their clients.
- And more.
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Note: Maybe it’s just AL, but it feels like the jargon quotient in legal tech company announcements is really increasing. One reason is perhaps PR teams using tools such as ChatGPT that may be packing the text with buzz words – and way too many hyperbolic adjectives, or maybe it’s because of over-the-top SEO efforts? Another possible reason is all the talk of agent this, and AI model that, is bamboozling not just the legal market, but the marketing teams of the tech companies themselves?