Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish authorized tech startup, has in some way managed to draw the backing of two well-known enterprise capital corporations. The startup targets in-house authorized groups and regulation corporations with an AI platform that they’ll configure to assist different staff within the firm. This fashion, anybody within the firm can solicit assist with authorized duties reminiscent of reviewing contracts and answering particular questions on a doc.
Integrated in October final 12 months, the Edinburgh-based firm is the handiwork of former senior TravelPerk executives Ross McNairn (CEO) and Robbie Falkenthal (COO), alongside CTO Volodymyr Giginiak, who served in numerous engineering roles at Microsoft, Fb, and Instagram. Six months after leaving their earlier positions, Wordsmith already claims notable prospects, reminiscent of Trustpilot, whereas it’s partnering with no less than one main regulation agency — DLA Piper.
This early traction has garnered the eye of international VC agency Index Ventures, which has led a $5 million seed funding into Wordsmith alongside Common Catalyst and Gareth Williams, founder and former CEO of Scottish tech unicorn Skyscanner.
That such a younger Scottish startup has secured the backing of two VC corporations which have collectively invested within the likes of Fb, Slack, Sonos, Airbnb, Stripe, and Snap, speaks not solely to Wordsmith’s early promise, but additionally the founders’ pedigrees. Previous to TravelPerk, McNairn based a journey administration startup referred to as Dorsai Journey. He bought it to Skyscanner simply 9 months after launch and have become Skyscanner’s head of product. He then joined one other unicorn, second-hand buying app LetGo, earlier than touchdown at TravelPerk.
On prime of this, McNairn can be a professional lawyer, a occupation he left after a few years to change into a software program engineer.
Legally fond
The authorized tech area is sizzling. Previously six months alone we’ve seen a number of “co-pilot for attorneys” emerge, reminiscent of Harvey AI within the U.S. and Luminance within the U.Okay. Different authorized tech startups, reminiscent of Definely and Lawhive within the U.Okay., have raised respectable seed and Sequence A rounds, as have Alexi (Canada) and Leya AI (Sweden).
These firms are tackling the authorized sector from numerous angles and regional focal factors, however they’ve one factor in widespread: they’re all driving the generative AI wave.
As with different paperwork-heavy sectors, authorized eagles are looking for methods to automate repetitive, labor-intensive work, in order that they’ll deal with extra strategic duties. That is the place Wordsmith enters the fray, offering what it calls a “lawyer-in-the-loop” generative AI platform.
Whereas Harvey AI is focusing on attorneys themselves, Wordsmith is aimed extra at staff inside an organization, with authorized groups configuring the platform behind the scenes by connecting it to all their very own information sources. Legal professionals stay obtainable when wanted.
McNairn attracts comparisons to one thing like TravelPerk, which supplies SMEs a self-serve enterprise journey administration platform that enables managers to outline the insurance policies and approval processes. Workers do all their very own bookings inside these parameters.
“At TravelPerk one of many massive steps [we made] was that we went from making an attempt to hurry up the journey group by promoting them barely higher tooling, to mainly enabling the remainder of the enterprise to self-book,” McNairn advised TechCrunch. “After which the journey group simply administrated, checked, and made positive that it was calibrated accurately. And that shift of constructing instruments only for the operate, as a substitute to constructing instruments for the remainder of the enterprise to work extra successfully, is a big change in how you’re employed.”
Firms can configure Wordsmith in two core methods: as an autopilot for less complicated issues that don’t want knowledgeable oversight, and as a co-pilot whereby a lawyer is all the time within the loop to offer their seal of approval earlier than any formal responses are offered.
A typical workflow would possibly contain somebody in gross sales needing to scrutinize a brand new contract, or maybe procurement making an attempt to shut a deal and who wants entry to data reminiscent of the corporate’s safety posture — the sorts of questions which are pretty commonplace and the place the responses aren’t prone to change a lot. By querying Wordsmith, anybody can get the mandatory data.
Different potential use circumstances would possibly embody somebody issuing an organization with a topic entry request (SAR), whereby companies in sure jurisdictions are legally obliged to honor requests associated to non-public information entry. On this occasion, Wordsmith might be configured to just accept a submission and connect with an organization’s ticketing system, and reply both with the requested data, or with a template response outlining timescales and the following steps — no matter an organization’s inside tips and processes dictate.
Mannequin conduct
Wordsmith makes use of a mixture of foundational giant language fashions (LLMs), together with OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude.
“We use the correct one for the job,” McNairn mentioned. “Some are actually good at analyzing issues like logic inside authorized agreements, and a few are actually good at being extraordinarily exact on serving to us to alter language. Claude is superb at rationalising by means of issues, and OpenAI (GPT-4) is simply all spherical implausible, with completely different dimensions.”
Enterprises have proven a little bit trepidation at embracing generative AI, which McNairn mentioned the corporate is addressing in numerous methods. This contains permitting firms to stipulate that their information doesn’t go away the EU. It additionally guarantees to not practice its AI on firms’ information. Wordsmith configures a “personal occasion” for enterprises, which means it connects in to information wherever it’s (e.g. Google Drive or Notion) to enhance a response utilizing an organization’s personal information, however this information isn’t used to coach the mannequin for different firms.
“We use a approach referred to as RAG (retrieval augmented technology),” McNairn mentioned. “So we’re not coaching on their information — we’re simply utilizing it when it’s crucial. We recollect it, use it to counterpoint the reply, after which give them a response.”
Excessive frequency
Whereas enhancing in-house authorized groups shall be Wordsmith’s core objective initially, the corporate can be trying to work with regulation corporations, as evidenced by its early tie-up with DLA Piper. On this occasion, DLA — a worldwide billion-dollar authorized powerhouse — is co-developing AI brokers in partnership with Wordsmith, with a view towards distributing this to its personal prospects.
So in impact, they’re inputting their very own technical information to enhance Wordsmith for very particular authorized domains. It might change into one thing that they’ll promote on as new kind of authorized service, presumably at a decrease charge.
“It’s larger frequency and decrease value to have interaction with corporations’ information on this manner, moderately than paying 1000’s of {dollars} an hour,” McNairn mentioned. “It’s [also] a significantly better technique to present they’re progressive and trying to undertake AI.”
This enterprise mannequin might work significantly effectively for small-to-midsize regulation corporations, the place Wordsmith might be engaged to seize greater jobs or tackle extra shoppers.
McNairns says that whereas this providing remains to be in its early design levels with DLA, Wordsmith will possible commercialize this quickly. “It’s simply not there but,” he mentioned.
With $5 million within the financial institution, McNairn says that Wordsmith will now speed up its hiring each in Scotland and the U.S. The corporate counts 9 staff at this time, and whereas some are based mostly in London and/or within the means of transferring up, McNairn says he’s eager to make Edinburgh the corporate’s middle of gravity.
“It’s the ecosystem factor I’m fairly keen about,” he mentioned. “There have been three unicorns that I’ve been a part of earlier than this, and I simply wish to construct one thing cool in Scotland.”
