Who is the target audience for something like this? I'm not sure anybody is going to pay to have Apple's ToS simplified before clicking "agree". On the other hand, if you are squinting at a contract that actually matters, I don't think a service like this gives sufficient understanding of what all that legalese would actually mean if shit hits the fan. For example, changing the applicable law in a contract can yield wildly different interpretations without changing a word in the contract iself. This is why you should seek professional help when in doubt.
You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc from a company who "does not guarantee that the stuff on the website is good or works"? IANAL but I don't think so.
> You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc from a company who "does not guarantee that the stuff on the website is good or works"? IANAL but I don't think so.
If you are conversing with your own lawyer, you should be getting your summary from them, as that way you can be fairly sure it's correct (and you can probably sue them if it's not). That's part of a lawyer's job, explaining the law to their clients.
If you are conversing with someone else's lawyer, and you don't have your own lawyer, you are dangerously close to relying on this software for legal advice, which, given how confidently incorrect AI can be, could end in tears.
I assume lawyers could benefit from a tool that can summarize a large document rapidly. They’re often faced with thousands of pages of documents, and in large class actions possibly hundreds of thousands to millions.
I’m a unionized employee who is currently waiting on finalized legal language for a new contract.
A lot of my time will be spent reviewing a diff between the current agreement and the proposed agreement but it’s a 500 page document. I might give this product a try just to see what it spits out. I could see this being incredibly useful if it could write a plain language, non-biased, summary of changes.
> You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc
Indeed.
We all know what the medical profession quite rightly thinks about patients who turn up having (supposedly) self-diagnosed themselves with the help of Doctor Google.
Given how confident AI can be when it's incorrect, it feels like a bit of a problem to use AI with legal docs, since you can't really trust it to be correct (and the cost of being incorrect may be absurdly high).
Given how _poorly written_ a lot of real legal documents are, I would definitely not trust any current AI to summarize it accurately. How would it handle documents where terms or clauses are in conflict, or any other situation where a close-reading human would have to step back and say "okay, this is _semantically_ impossible?"
I could see a tool like this being valuable as an outline generator for long documents, but I would be very reluctant to believe any statements it makes about the actual legal effects.
I’ve had ChatGPT tell me how to do something one way, and then give an example that omitted the specific syntax it had called out. It was only until I told it that the example didn’t reflect what it wrote that it basically said ‘oops! Here’s the corrected version’. I can’t even begin to imagine how poorly that could go in a legal context.
As a NLP researcher at a well known place & working on this, I totally 100% agree with you, this is ultra dangerous and should not be used, straight up, on anything remotely serious
Can this idea be turned on its head to engineer adversarial legal language that sounds reasonable but actually has terrible implications for the signee?
I've heard that in situations like this courts will usually uphold the spirit and not the letter of the contract (same as eg if you have a typo and add a zero somewhere). Not a lawyer and might be 100% wrong on this.
I'm sorry, but in the nicest possible way, this is bullshit.
Anybody who has been in business-roles that involve reviewing legal documents will tell you that.
TL;DR three things:
1. The AI will NOT tell you if it is the right document for the context, only a lawyer will do that
2. The AI is unlikely to correctly analyse the document, clauses in a legal document have inter-relation with each other and with the general context (perhaps even with other legal documents you have previously signed). That sort of analysis is only something a lawyer can do.
3. Perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY ... with legal documents, often the important thing is not what is IN the document, but what is NOT IN there. Only a lawyer can tell you what is missing in a legal document AND help you get that missing stuff negotiated into it.
Really, I'd run away from something like this as fast as you can.
Whether you're using the right start point and picking the right optional pieces are definitely important. But for most kinds of agreements I see and advise on, there's nothing lawyers know that nobody else could know. What you need doesn't have to come from a lawyer, though it often does.
Meanwhile, specifics of the deal and the broader context can also matter, sometime more than the abstractions legal forms tend to deal in. A lawyer may or may not notice those and reason through them.
Paving an AI path over ill-fitting or over-standardized legal terms isn't great for the industry. Neither is reinforcing lawyer monopoly over business knowledge.
I assume their argument would be that they are just summarizing information that you provided and not giving you advice on what to do with this information. Similar to how summarizing a book's plot isn't an endorsement of that book.
I'm not a lawyer though, so I have no idea if that logic would hold up in court. I'm just guessing that's the rational they are using.
I started wading through the Google example. I got about 0.25 of the way through.
The glosses all seem accurate, if incomplete sometimes. I got a strong sense that they had been reviewed/polished by a human "expert". That might explain the pricing.
I didn't find the glosses much clearer than the original, just shorter. The Google legalese I read was fairly clear. With the document being a legal contract, it's obviously vital to understand the legalese.
I'd be impressed by an AI that can read an employment contract, and say "Whoah! Clause 31-B(ii) is implicitly asking you to sign your descendants into servitude in perpetuity! Perhaps you should take a look!", or "Did you notice that all benefits are contingent on stuff beyond your control?". I'd probably have paid $25 for that, because I've never had a lawyer scan my employment contract. I read them myself, but IANAL.
You would actually want to discuss the document with a lawyer (AI), for instance asking if not paying the 100k in point 3.4.7a is enough for termination of the contract, show the reasons (copied from the doc and explained) and if yes, are there any clauses that invalidate that clause or any logical inconsistencies regarding that clause etc.
As someone (no legal background) who has to read legal documents sometimes (perks of being a founder cough) and would take advice (yet) from an AI over a lawyer; the above would give me enough of an idea how exposed we are or not and if a lawyer should be contacted. I can read legalise quite well (perks of having been a founder for 35 years), but if its 100s of pages, I need to be able to ask questions about the doc to get an idea of where I stand. Which is why I would hire a lawyer to do a review after I send them my questions anyway.
It told me that it would cost $123 USD to summarize...
It also told me:
>"This document summary is not legal advice or legally binding in any way. You should consult a lawyer."
Opinion:
A Lawyer would cost me less... <g>
(Perhaps I could get a cheaper rate if I uploaded the Magna Carta or The Twelve Tables (of Ancient Rome) or the Ten Commandments or Newton's Three Laws -- or the Two Laws of Richard J Maybury:
o Do all you have agreed to do
o Do not encroach on other persons or their property
)
All I know is, $123 is too expensive for me -- and,
What if the AI takes the Law -- and interprets it all wrong?
The fact I have to upload to a server and my document will not be deleted for up to 24 hours, makes it a no go for most corporate users. Make this a standalone desktop app, with zero cloud dependency and it would be useful. This is very useful for a first pass through a legal doc, for example, to triage documents.
Also, it uses OpenAI services (GPT3) - so now you also need to understand their TOS and data retention policies. Makes it a non starter for any private or confidential documents.
I work through a bunch of contract documents reissued with a just a few changes. I need a service that would identify what the changes are instead of me going through each document and reading it over again Or doing a comparison of previously issued documents with this one.
I'm excited to see where this goes because I think it is a cool application of AI. That said, two of the first three paragraph summaries are wrong in this example:
> [Investor Name] gave [Company Name] the right to certain shares of its Capital Stock in exchange for [Amount] on [Date].
This is backwards
> The Post-Money Valuation Cap is a number that is written in Section 2.
This isn't true, the number is here, "additional defined terms" are later.
I wonder, what happens when you read just the summary of a complex section, sign, and then years later are in a lawsuit. If Detangled's algorithm in shown to have clearly written the summary wrong... are they in any way liable? hehe notice their own terms with summaries: https://detangle.ai/terms
> AI-generated summaries of your legal docs so you can understand what you're signing.
If you sell me a summary of a legal document, which was advertised as being useful to understand the legal document, that seems like just about the most straightforward case of legal advice I can imagine.
Absolutely fantastic! This is a great use of AI here, definitely using this going forward. A bit concerned though, the LLC name doesn't give confidence when reading through the output with confidence.
It says all documents and summaries are deleted after 24 hours, but are the contents of the documents incorporated into a model? I'd imagine for some kinds of legal documents (say those under a court's protective order) this would present issues.
It depends what you use the tool for. You can use tool for menial tasks while doing something highly creatives. Tools inherently don't make us dumber. The choice is always lies with the individual.
The summaries are good but I wish it also had the ability to answer my questions about document like whether something is allowed or not or what are my rights, etc,.
fellerts|3 years ago
You say "The summaries are to help inform conversations with actual lawyers", but would a lawyer give a rats ass about a layman's interpretation of an AI-backed translation of a legal doc from a company who "does not guarantee that the stuff on the website is good or works"? IANAL but I don't think so.
NoboruWataya|3 years ago
If you are conversing with your own lawyer, you should be getting your summary from them, as that way you can be fairly sure it's correct (and you can probably sue them if it's not). That's part of a lawyer's job, explaining the law to their clients.
If you are conversing with someone else's lawyer, and you don't have your own lawyer, you are dangerously close to relying on this software for legal advice, which, given how confidently incorrect AI can be, could end in tears.
fnordpiglet|3 years ago
bronco21016|3 years ago
A lot of my time will be spent reviewing a diff between the current agreement and the proposed agreement but it’s a 500 page document. I might give this product a try just to see what it spits out. I could see this being incredibly useful if it could write a plain language, non-biased, summary of changes.
traceroute66|3 years ago
Indeed.
We all know what the medical profession quite rightly thinks about patients who turn up having (supposedly) self-diagnosed themselves with the help of Doctor Google.
falcolas|3 years ago
drbwaa|3 years ago
I could see a tool like this being valuable as an outline generator for long documents, but I would be very reluctant to believe any statements it makes about the actual legal effects.
scrose|3 years ago
make3|3 years ago
babyshake|3 years ago
oa335|3 years ago
stronglikedan|3 years ago
tasseff|3 years ago
lordgrenville|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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make3|3 years ago
traceroute66|3 years ago
Anybody who has been in business-roles that involve reviewing legal documents will tell you that.
TL;DR three things:
Really, I'd run away from something like this as fast as you can.kemitchell|3 years ago
Meanwhile, specifics of the deal and the broader context can also matter, sometime more than the abstractions legal forms tend to deal in. A lawyer may or may not notice those and reason through them.
Paving an AI path over ill-fitting or over-standardized legal terms isn't great for the industry. Neither is reinforcing lawyer monopoly over business knowledge.
jackbrookes|3 years ago
ahepp|3 years ago
superfrank|3 years ago
I'm not a lawyer though, so I have no idea if that logic would hold up in court. I'm just guessing that's the rational they are using.
denton-scratch|3 years ago
The glosses all seem accurate, if incomplete sometimes. I got a strong sense that they had been reviewed/polished by a human "expert". That might explain the pricing.
I didn't find the glosses much clearer than the original, just shorter. The Google legalese I read was fairly clear. With the document being a legal contract, it's obviously vital to understand the legalese.
I'd be impressed by an AI that can read an employment contract, and say "Whoah! Clause 31-B(ii) is implicitly asking you to sign your descendants into servitude in perpetuity! Perhaps you should take a look!", or "Did you notice that all benefits are contingent on stuff beyond your control?". I'd probably have paid $25 for that, because I've never had a lawyer scan my employment contract. I read them myself, but IANAL.
goldforever|3 years ago
[deleted]
tluyben2|3 years ago
As someone (no legal background) who has to read legal documents sometimes (perks of being a founder cough) and would take advice (yet) from an AI over a lawyer; the above would give me enough of an idea how exposed we are or not and if a lawyer should be contacted. I can read legalise quite well (perks of having been a founder for 35 years), but if its 100s of pages, I need to be able to ask questions about the doc to get an idea of where I stand. Which is why I would hire a lawyer to do a review after I send them my questions anyway.
peter_d_sherman|3 years ago
It told me that it would cost $123 USD to summarize...
It also told me:
>"This document summary is not legal advice or legally binding in any way. You should consult a lawyer."
Opinion:
A Lawyer would cost me less... <g>
(Perhaps I could get a cheaper rate if I uploaded the Magna Carta or The Twelve Tables (of Ancient Rome) or the Ten Commandments or Newton's Three Laws -- or the Two Laws of Richard J Maybury:
o Do all you have agreed to do
o Do not encroach on other persons or their property
)
All I know is, $123 is too expensive for me -- and,
What if the AI takes the Law -- and interprets it all wrong?
?
???
bernardv|3 years ago
binarymax|3 years ago
nashashmi|3 years ago
NoboruWataya|3 years ago
yakshaving|3 years ago
meindnoch|3 years ago
Shpigford|3 years ago
Here's the YC SAFE, for example: https://detangle.ai/examples/yc-safe
simonista|3 years ago
> [Investor Name] gave [Company Name] the right to certain shares of its Capital Stock in exchange for [Amount] on [Date].
This is backwards
> The Post-Money Valuation Cap is a number that is written in Section 2.
This isn't true, the number is here, "additional defined terms" are later.
andrewfromx|3 years ago
ahepp|3 years ago
If you sell me a summary of a legal document, which was advertised as being useful to understand the legal document, that seems like just about the most straightforward case of legal advice I can imagine.
ryanlitalien|3 years ago
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