The newest “lawyer” at the artificial intelligence startup Synthesia doesn’t have a law degree, a bar card, or a pulse.
The company, valued at $4 billion in January, sells software that helps businesses make videos with digital avatars for corporate training and marketing. Now one of its own executives is using that same technology to bulk up its legal department.
Gabe Stern, Synthesia’s general counsel, said he built a legal AI avatar designed to chat with any prospective customer’s legal and procurement teams.
Synthesia handles a high volume of contracts, Stern said. The biggest time sink is not marking up contracts. It’s everything around it: scheduling calls, answering repetitive questions, and talking through points with the other side’s counsel.
The legal avatar is still in private testing, but Stern said the idea is to let the avatar handle the early rounds of negotiation, or at least get the conversation rolling before a human lawyer steps in.
