The Use of Large Language Models in LegalTech

Whenever there is a significant shift in the industry, we are interested in tracking its implications. 

Although many companies have been using AI in legal in some form or other for years now, the advent of ChatGPT and large language models (LLM) that are powerful enough to understand and generate meaningful responses to complex questions without additional training represents a new era. There remain sceptics who don’t believe the technology is advanced enough to have a significant impact in the legal industry. These sceptics find it hard to imagine concrete use cases for the technology in legal practice. There are others who believe LLMs and advanced generative AI will radically change the industry in the space of just a few years.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. 

Having read many of the debates raging online, the difference between the skeptics and the enthusiasts appears to be more than just a personality trait, like the difference between pessimists and optimists. It is rooted in the way that different people imagine the technology being used (from fully replacing humans in a legal workflow, on the one hand, to supporting part of a legal workflow with humans in the mix, on the other). There are also clear differences in enthusiasm between those who have not had first-hand access to LLMs beyond the ChatGPT app, and those who have seen and accessed the extremely powerful beyond-GPT-3 LLMs that some companies and firms are working with in beta. The fact that it is the latter group who tend to be enthusiasts should be telling.

Regardless of how you feel about the tech, there are some real things happening in the industry with LLMs. I started making a list of the legaltech companies that have openly announced they are working with LLMs, and a week ago on Twitter I asked for public input on that list. I was interested not just in which companies are using it, but also for what. This has allowed us to put together the most complete list we’ve yet seen of companies using GPT or LLMs for legal use cases, and sheds light on what those use cases are in practice.

The primary use cases we are seeing for this technology in legaltech right now are:

• Summarizing,
• Drafting (of clauses or first drafts of documents), and
• Legal research.

There also several products that are being developed to support lawyers in multiple ways, as a kind of “virtual assistant”.

I will set out the list below, but first, a few qualifiers:

• Although we at Legaltech Hub are profoundly excited by this development in the technology space at large and the potential impact of it in the legal industry, we do not believe that all legaltech or tech companies should be using GPT or LLMs, nor are we making any kind of qualitative assessment about those companies that are or are not using this technology. 
• We are tracking this data because it is of interest to many people, and it will be telling over the next year to see what kind of success the companies that started early to use this technology enjoy. We think the relative success (or not) of early adopter companies will provide an indication of the likely impact this technology will have overall in our industry.
• The list I’ve gathered is based on information that is publicly available, and predominantly highlights companies that have already made announcements that they are using LLMs for particular use cases. We are aware of several other companies that are experimenting with this technology but have not yet made public announcements. We are also aware of several law firms that are experimenting with this technology, again without publicly announcing it. In other words, this list represents only the tip of the iceberg and we imagine there is far more activity happening under the surface that most of us can’t yet see.
• We have added a new feature on Legaltech Hub that allows users to filter solutions by whether they use GPT or other LLMs. Simply click on the search arrow leaving the search box empty to see all solutions, and then apply the “GPT / LLM” value under the Attributes filter. We will continue to track this space, and will be updating the list below and the data on our site.

Without further waffling, here is the list I’ve compiled of legaltech companies (or law firms) using LLMs, categorized by use case type.