Predict.law, a stealthy new Seattle-area legal-tech startup, is using artificial intelligence to help attorneys and their law firms better predict the outcome of legal cases.
Applying AI and machine learning training on precedent case history and the fact patterns associated with those cases, Predict.law uses technology to replace the current process of manually searching for relevant prior cases.
The startup’s initial target market is contingency-based civil cases, in which the attorney and law firm are not compensated unless the case has a successful outcome for the client.
“A predictive tool allows attorneys in these cases to both better select cases and more confidently negotiate cases on behalf of their clients,” said Predict.law co-founder and CEO Pat Wilburn.
Wilburn is a former chief strategy officer at Thomson Reuters, and he previously spent 15 years at Microsoft, most recently as a GM for in corporate business development for Azure.
“It became clear to me during my time at Thomson Reuters that ‘legal tech’ could drive fundamental changes to the efficiency of legal work,” Wilburn said.
His co-founders include chief product officer Stan Zaporozhets, who has prior experience at Apple, Everlaw and OpenText, and more recently building consumer-facing AI at Instagram. Chief technology officer Dave Contreras has worked at IBM, Google and Box, and has been building AI applications for the past six years.
Predict.law graduated from Mudita Studios, a startup studio that is part of Mudita Venture Partners, which provided seed funding for the startup.
The company joins a number of other Seattle-area startups using technology to disrupt the legal space. They include Clearbrief, whose AI-powered software uses natural language processing to assess how a given sentence is backed up by supporting evidence; Prophia, a startup whose platform scours and extracts key terms from commercial real estate contracts; and Lexion, which uses AI to help legal departments manage contracts.
Predict.law is currently pre-launch and attorneys interested in beta testing the tool can request to join a private preview program. The company is targeting an initial product release later this year.