Legal Gen AI Megatrend 2024: Tailored Use Cases

Abhijat Saraswat was the second guest to join us for a conversation during Legalweek. We spent over an hour swapping notes on our approaches to product development, diving deep into the importance of weaving technology into the organic workflows of users. The renewed focus on product development is the second megatrend we noticed about generative AI tools in 2024: the tools will mature in their offerings, and start to fit into genuinely productive use cases.

Ab called this emergence of AI tools uniquely designed for use cases as the 'Ambient AI’.

In our video chat, Ab shares a master class in product design and development.

For us, this means there will be less thin wrappers around APIs, and more meaningful tools.

Imagine switching on a computer or opening an application, and the tool responses to your presence, needs, and preferences without any explicit commands. This is the essence of what we consider ‘Ambient AI’ or ‘invisible features"‘. In our tools, this could mean systems that rank relevance of results based on the specific needs of a lawyer in their context, or content that changes depending on the history of interactions between the user and the machine. Ambient AI is shift from the conspicuous chat tools to the inconspicuous enhancements where the value of AI is measured its ability to enhance decision-making and productivity quietly and effectively.

For us, this means we ask fundamental questions like, “what’s the pain point?”

The journey towards creating these ambient or invisible solutions begins with identifying good use cases – scenarios where users experience challenges and where the underlying technology (whether that is AI or something else) can resolve those pain points. This journey starts with a deep understanding of the end users' requirements, challenges, and workflows. Rather than offering tools that automate case research, document review, or contract drafting, we want to develop solutions that focus on easing the underlying pains.

For us, this means our solutions are not the focal point.

Better products in this case involve the transition from putting generative AI features into a chatbot to embracing its power behind deeper integrations. Many products will have to shift their paradigm in order to offer solutions that are intuitive and efficient. The key to unlocking value lies in the product maker’s ability to identify and develop tools for well-defined use cases.

We hope this conversation contain nuggets that will help other product makers create better tools for their end users.