The Geek In Review

vLex's Damien Riehl on Examining vLex's New Vincent AI

Oct 30, 2023

vLex's Damien Riehl demonstrates Vincent AI, a generative AI tool that retrieves legal sources, generates summaries, and provides jurisdiction comparison. It excels due to its grounding in real legal sources and ability to handle foreign languages. The chatbot style allows for straightforward questions and future plans include generating new motions for summary judgment.

34:00

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Episode guests

Damien Riehl

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Vincent AI leverages a massive dataset of over a billion legal documents, providing refined search results based on user queries.

Vincent AI employs vector databases and symbolic AI techniques to improve legal research outcomes and ensure accurate retrieval of relevant information.

Deep dives

The History and Scope of Vincent AI

Vincent AI is a tool developed by B-Lect and Fast Case that leverages a massive data set of over a billion legal documents. This data set is obtained through years of collecting and democratizing legal information in the United States and worldwide. By merging the data from Fast Case and B-Lect, Vincent AI is able to run large-scale models and provide refined search results based on user queries. With its retrieval augmented generation (RAG) approach, Vincent AI can narrow down a vast amount of legal documents to a more manageable and relevant subset, assisting users in finding the answers they are looking for.

Introduction

2min

Leveraging Large Language Models and Vector Databases

12min

Advantages of Using a Chat GPT and Addressing the Paradox of Choice

1min

Prompting the Vincent AI and Jurisdiction Comparison

3min

Differences in Spanish Language and Translation Challenges

2min

Long-term Plans for AI Technology

13min

On a special “on location” episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert sits down with vLex’s Damien Riehl for a hands-on demonstration of the new generative AI tool called Vincent AI. While at the Ark KM Conference, Riehl explains that vLex has amassed a huge legal dataset over its 35 year history which allows them to now run their own large language models (LLM). The recent merger between vLex and Fastcase has combined their datasets to create an even more robust training corpus.

Riehl demonstrates how Vincent AI works by having it research a question on trade secret law and employee theft of customer lists. It retrieves relevant cases, statutes, regulations, and secondary sources, highlighting the most relevant passages. It summarizes each source and provides a confidence rating on how well each excerpt answers the initial question. Vincent AI then generates a legal memorandum summarizing the relevant law. Riehl explains how this is more trustworthy than a general chatbot like ChatGPT because it is grounded in real legal sources.

Riehl shows how Vincent AI can compare legal jurisdictions by generating memorandums on the same question for California, New York, the UK, and Spain. It can even handle foreign language sources, translating them into English. This allows for efficient multi-jurisdictional analysis. Riehl emphasizes Vincent AI's focus on asking straightforward questions in natural language rather than requiring complex prompts.

Looking ahead, Riehl sees potential for Vincent AI to leverage external LLMs like Anthropic's Claude model as well as their massive dataset of briefs and motions to generate tailored legal arguments statistically likely to persuade specific judges on particular issues. He explains this requires highly accurate tagging of documents which they can achieve through symbolic AI. Riehl aims to continue expanding features without requiring lawyers to become AI prompt engineers.

On access to justice, Riehl believes AI can help legal aid and pro bono attorneys handle more matters more efficiently. He also sees potential for AI assistance to pro se litigants to promote fairer outcomes. For judges, AI could help manage pro se cases and expedite decision-making. Overall, Riehl is optimistic about AI augmenting legal work over the next two years through ongoing improvements.

Riehl discusses vLex's new Vincent AI system and its ability to efficiently research legal issues across jurisdictions and across languages. He provides insight into the technology's development and potential while emphasizing understandable user interaction. The conversation highlights AI's emerging role in legal services to increase productivity, insight, and access to justice.

Links:

vLex Vincent AI

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⁠Transcript