Building an AI legal assistant for atla (YC S23)
Designed the MVP for an AI-based legal assistant (B2B) for Atla. Helped founders strategise with clarity. Acted as a PM to explore and prioritise product features while designing and validating them with real users.
atla uses AI safety techniques to make sense of the dense legal language, serving as a reliable ally in high-stakes legal decision-making. atla searches through millions of legal docs, then uses machine learning to extract key information from each source. This process-based reasoning leads to reliable answers.
I worked with the founders to refine their vision into an actionable, iterative product roadmap. Interviewing real users and doing usability testing helped us leapfrog with the iterations. I was able to come up with solutions that'd solve users' problems while keeping the MVP scope small.
My contribution
Product strategy
Product design
Product vision
The team
2 x Founders
1 x Product designer
Year
2023
Context
The current users, the legal teams at Volkswagen and N26, ask a legal question, and the AI assistant generates a reliable answer alongside the legal sources, documents and court decisions. The tool also lets them ask follow-up questions, and dig deeper to find the 'whole' answer.
Dig Deeper
On interviewing the lawyers, the biggest hurdle in adopting the software came to light. Lawyers needed to reduce liability, and a one-shot AI-generated summary did not cut it for them. They needed a way to go deeper into their research and find answers from different angles. After testing a few prototypes, we went with a threaded way of asking for follow-ups - Dig deeper.
Outcome
Roman and Maurice did a successful YC launch in July '23 and the MVP is being used by the legal team of N26 and Volkswagen.
