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Back to Building Legal Agents When You Can't See the Data - Jacob Lauritzen, CTO of Legora, with Jacob Lauritzen.

Do Legora Forward Deployed Engineers See Client Data?

Jacob Lauritzen says no. Forward deployed engineers build the system around a client's workflows, and they still do not touch the matter data.

A legal engineer and a forward deployed engineer are different jobs. Legal engineers configure Legora the way a power user would. They do not write code. A forward deployed engineer writes code into production: the custom integration, the missing piece of the product, and the change that goes back to the core team. On a large client that has already tried to build something and failed, Legora may staff both. They sit with the lawyers, learn the current workflows, and put those workflows into the product. Some of that is configuration. Some of it needs production code.

Sometimes the forward deployed engineer is onboarded like a firm employee and given a laptop. Lauritzen says that is uncommon. Usually the integration is enough, and it works without the engineer opening the client files.

Transcript

Building Legal Agents When You Can't See the Data - Jacob Lauritzen, CTO of Legora ·

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

More from this episode

  1. How Does Legora Test a New AI Model on Legal Work?Jacob Lauritzen says Legora scores a new model on a heatmap of practice areas and tasks, because a release often gets better at some legal work and worse at…
  2. Why Do Law Firms Use a Partnership Model?Jacob Lauritzen says a law firm partnership exists because the only capital law firms have is human capital.
  3. Are AI Tools Replacing Junior Lawyers?Jacob Lauritzen says no. Legora is not seeing paralegals and junior lawyers disappear.
  4. Why Would Law Firms Adopt AI If They Bill by the Hour?Jacob Lauritzen says large firms are adopting AI because the hourly model is already under competitive pressure, not because billing by the hour rewards speed.
  5. How Quickly Do American Customers Move on Legora?Jacob Lauritzen says European customers have been slower to move on Legora, while American customers move quickly and keep the work high on the agenda.
  6. How Does Legora Test AI Agents Without Seeing Client Data?Jacob Lauritzen says Legora tests its agents on stand-in matters and on coarse labels, because the company cannot read a trace of what the agent did for a…
  7. Why Does Legora Have to Run on Azure?Jacob Lauritzen says Legora had to host everything on Azure because client law firms already treated Microsoft as an approved vendor.
  8. How Does Legora Run a Contract Due Diligence?Jacob Lauritzen says Legora Tabular Review is a spreadsheet for due diligence: one row per contract, one column per question, and every cell filled in from…
  9. Does Legora Offer Its Whole Product as an API?Jacob Lauritzen says no. Legora is not offering the whole web app as an API.
  10. Why Did Legora Stop Trying to Stay at 20 Engineers?Jacob Lauritzen says staying at 20 engineers would lose the deals. Legora is in fierce competition, and clients ask for more than a tiny team can ship.

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