Bringing Neural Nets to the Law
Casetext opened 2020 with the launch of a revolutionary new motion-drafting tool called Compose. Compose dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes lawyers to draft a motion or brief by serving up the arguments and standards appropriate to the motion type in a specific jurisdiction. Compose also included a powerful new search functionality called “Parallel Search,” which was the first legal research tool to leverage breakthrough technology called transformer-based neural nets. Parallel Search proved to be so popular with attorneys that in June of 2020 Casetext made that search capability available as a stand-alone product and an upgrade to their Casetext research platform. More than a decade ago, major legal research platforms Lexis and Westlaw freed their subscribers from Boolean search by introducing natural language search. But freedom from Boolean search did
not mean freedom from results limited to literal keyword matches. The concept-matching enabled by the neural net that powers Parallel Search is a a “great leap forward” and superior to anything enabled by earlier systems. Pablo Arredondo, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Casetext, refers to traditional natural language search as “casual Friday in the prison of the keyword.” In other words, a lawyer was still at the mercy of which specific words he chose for his query.
I asked Arredondo to provide an example of how Parallel Search in action.
Consider this query: McVader’s termination of Skywalker for refusal to wear a mask cannot be construed as discriminatory.