Interview: Genie AI’s CTO on legal SaaS and the democratisation of contract law

Genie AI is reaping the rewards of a concern strategy overhaul it pursued immoderate 5 years ago. The UK based ineligible AI startup is portion of an illustrious radical of newcomers disrupting the assemblage which includes Harvey AI, Robin AI, Luminance, Clio and Legora, among others. Many of these disruptors are present being utilized successful ample Magic Circle instrumentality firms.

For example, Harvey AI is being utilized by A&O Shearman, Latham & Watkins and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Legora by Linklaters, and Definely and Luminance by Slaughter and May.

But successful Genie AI's case, it turned retired that gathering solutions for instrumentality firms was conscionable a starting point. It’s however the institution raised VC superior and however it proceeded to carve retired a niche successful the wider ineligible AI market.

Genie AI was founded successful 2016 by Nitish Mutha and his University College London chap pupil Raffi Faruq. The brace met portion doing a Masters grade successful instrumentality learning astatine a clip erstwhile the exertion had yet to saturate mainstream concern processes.

The institution joined the London subdivision of incubator Entrepreneur First with its archetypal ngo to service instrumentality firms. “We were gathering AI earlier LLMs became a large thing, utilizing accepted instrumentality learning with overmuch longer improvement cycles,” says Mutha who present serves astatine CTO.

But Mutha and Faruq soon realised that if their aspiration was to alteration the ineligible industry, they had to recognize stakeholder motivations much deeply. “They're [law firms) much motivated to complaint billable hours,” Mutha explains. So, successful effect, greater ratio and reduced billable hours utilizing Genie AI’s level was not a large usage lawsuit fit.

This disconnect was the information down pivoting the concern to service the extremity idiosyncratic who was consuming ineligible services – and, successful the process, provided entree to a overmuch larger endeavor market.

“It was not similar our discussions with Big Magic Circle instrumentality firms were not going well. They were going conscionable fine,” says Mutha, which makes the pivot a judgement telephone that was not instantly obvious.

But the challenges had go clearer arsenic the institution grew. Each idiosyncratic instrumentality steadfast runs antithetic and analyzable bequest tech stacks. In addition, determination are an inordinate assortment of documents, and levels of permissions, arsenic good arsenic documents that necessitate precise nuanced customisations. And that didn’t bode good for gathering “a bully tech merchandise which we tin past merchantability to everyone,” says Mutha.

A azygous merchandise which tin enactment for everyone, that the startup could absorption its resources connected seemed similar the champion strategy. This, against the proposal of investors.