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In an era of unprecedented transformation in the legal industry, vLex has consistently remained ahead of the curve as a legal technology pioneer. From launching Vincent AI in 2018 to completing the historic merger with Fastcase in 2023, vLex continues to lead the way in empowering legal professionals to harness the power of artificial intelligence.

We're excited to share that vLex's Chief Strategy Officer, Ed Walters, recently returned to Seyfarth Shaw LLP's podcast, Pioneers and Pathfinders, hosted by Seyfarth Partner, J. Stephen Poor. During their conversation, Ed shared valuable insights on the merger of vLex and Fastcase, the importance of data in the age of generative AI, the market's response to Vincent AI, empowering the next generation of AI-enabled lawyers, and more.

Listen to the full podcast.

Building Strength on Strength: The vLex and Fastcase Merger

The merger between vLex and Fastcase represents a powerful combination of expertise and capabilities. As Ed explained, "We put together this expertise and data, the vLex team is extremely good at engineering, and AI engineering in particular, and Fastcase’s great data acquisition team and product smarts, along with the distribution of working with the state bar associations.” The idea of combining these two companies was “building strength on strength,” Ed observed, and “it's pretty exciting to see it come together … all of these amazing legal tech legends . . . under the same roof.”

Ed, who co-founded Fastcase in 1999 and was its CEO for 24 years, particularly praised the leadership of the merged company. "Lluis Faus has done an extraordinary job as the CEO of the combined business... He's done an incredible job of managing through change and bringing the team together. He's an amazingly effective CEO. I really admire the work that he and his brother, Angel Faus, who is the Chief Technology Officer, have done as leaders of this now large and scaled company."

What Matters Most in the Generative AI Era? ‘It's the Data, Stupid’

When Stephen Poor asked Ed to discuss Vincent AI's strategy and development, Ed emphasized vLex’s early recognition of what would truly matter in the generative AI era: "If you look at the press release where we announced the merger, even in that press release 18 months ago, we said it's our thesis that over time, the large language models and the foundation models would sort of become a commodity… But what would be differentiated, what would never become a commodity, is the proprietary data."

At that point 18 months ago, Ed noted that “Fastcase and vLex had put together a global database of the law – the law of more than 110 countries, more than a billion, with a B, documents of structured legal data, and a very deep library of complaints and answers and dispositional motions from Docket Alarm.”

From Ed’s perspective, “even though you could prompt engineer your way to interesting structures of answers with any of the foundation models, the structured data itself would be a really differentiated product. That was the idea behind Vincent AI, to use that structured legal data to create something that nobody else could create.”

Vincent AI: One Global Platform with Unmatched Depth

Vincent AI was designed from the ground up to be a truly global platform. “From the start, it was multi-jurisdictional, multi-country from its birth,” Ed explained. “Today, [Vincent AI] works in 13 countries in the US, UK, Ireland, EU, Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Singapore, New Zealand, and Brazil.”

This global approach and the depth of vLex’s curated collections of legal information sets Vincent AI apart from traditional legal research tools. As Ed highlighted, "Every other system in the world, if you want to do research in multiple jurisdictions, you would search in the US and then you would log out, then you would log in to that product in the UK and run that search, and then log out and run that same search in Spain, or wherever else. Vincent was designed to be global right off the bat."

Building Trust through Transparency Combined with Authoritative Sources

Vincent AI's emphasis on transparency and authoritative sources is central to its value proposition for legal professionals. As Ed described, "It's incredibly powerful to ask a question in natural language, and to get back beautifully structured, authoritative, cited answers and to have full transparency to see where they came from.” In Vincent, “we show the answer to the question on one side of the page, and then a full transcript of the sources on the other side – the summaries, confidence scores, direct quotes, and hyperlinks so that you can open all of them."

However, Ed also underscored the importance of keeping human judgment in the loop: "These are good first drafts, they're not last drafts. I would never cut and paste anything, even from authoritative legal AI systems and drop it into a motion or brief.” From his vantage point as a lawyer and adjunct law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and at The University of Chicago Law School, Ed stressed that “legal work is like a chain, not like an event. We might replace some of the links in that chain [with Vincent AI], but the last few links of the chain always have to be human judgment."

The Market’s Response to Vincent AI

When discussing Vincent AI's growth, Stephen Poor asked Ed to reflect on the receptivity of the market and how that has evolved over the last year. “In the market, people are buying [Vincent AI] like crazy,” shared Ed. “It's law firms, yes, but also corporate legal departments, law schools, small law firms, medium-sized law firms, and all around the world. So at the same time that some of the biggest law firms in the world in the US and the UK are subscribing, small firms are subscribing in Spain and in the US, in Mexico, and all around the world.”

“Yeah, that's great,” said Stephen. “I've seen the argument that sometimes people think generative AI tools are even more important for the small firms, the solo practitioners, and the not-for-profits as they are for big firms, although obviously they have less resources to spend on it. Do you see that same dynamic?”

“Well, I don't know if it's more important for small firms than for big firms,” responded Ed, “but one thing I will say is that it is part of the mission of Fastcase and vLex to democratize the law. From Ed’s view, “If we built a tool that was only affordable and only offered to the biggest law firms in the world, I think that would be a failure. I want it to be very useful to the biggest law firms in the world, but I want to make sure that we price it and package it in a way that makes it available to small firms as well, so that it levels the playing field in some important ways.”

Empowering the Next Generation of AI-Enabled Lawyers

As the podcast was wrapping up, Stephen raised an important question about developing legal judgment in the next generation of lawyers: "People don't come out of law school with judgment and wisdom. Experience is what teaches you that. So how do you accelerate that part of the learning curve either in law school or in practice, so that you're delivering value to your clients?"

Ed responded with optimism about intentional training: "I think lawyers are much more likely to learn these competencies, the skills, the wisdom, if we intentionally create programs and methodologies to train them in those things... I really think we have an opportunity to use AI as a lever to re-examine how we train lawyers, what we train them on, and what we want them to be good at."

Looking to the future, Ed shared that "I've got 90 students at Georgetown Law right now who are very enthusiastic, who are fired up about being lawyers in the next five to ten years. And I love that enthusiasm. So I am very hopeful about what the next five to ten years are going to bring for the legal profession."

Ready to Transform Your Legal Practice?

We're incredibly grateful to Stephen and Seyfarth for hosting Ed for this wide-ranging conversation on all things vLex, generative AI, and the future of law. The discussion highlights both the transformative potential of AI in legal practice, and the importance of maintaining human judgment in legal work.

Want to learn more about why law firms and corporate legal departments worldwide are choosing Vincent AI to transform their legal services delivery?

Start your free trial of Vincent AI today and empower you and your team to do more.

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Authored By

Jeff Cox