Really, how does a legal chatbot work?
Tom Martin is the CEO and founder of the Canadian legal artificial intelligence company, LawDroid, whose aim is to automate tasks and conversations in the legal world. To this end, they have three offerings for legal chatbots: Reception (to convert your leads into visitors to your website); Paralegal (to get more clients and handle more matters); and Legal Health Check (to filter the quality of the contacts so that they become potential clients). All of which sounds very interesting, which is why Laura Fauqueur has conducted an interview with him to take us deeper into the matter and really understand what LawDroid is all about.
The first issue to be resolved is the commercial and economic one. The services sold by the company are attractive from the outside due to their low cost, but are these prices hiding something? Tom Martin explains that they have two plans that small firms or small lawyers can opt for: a first plan that costs $50 per month and offers a 30-day free trial; and a second plan that is priced more in between, as it is based on the specific needs of each client and how they want to automate their resources.
But, how complicated is LawDroid and what exactly can be done with this system? Tom Martin explains that there are two applications that attempt to make the client acquisition process (like when you start a new business) as easy as possible:
- The first one consists of a bot (software that performs repetitive tasks on the Internet), that every time someone enters your website, it will generate a form so that they can fill out their data and thus collect the information of future customers. The whole bot is created through templates that can be customized.
- The second is for when someone works with the system and wants a more personalized service but doesn’t know how to do it. A free blueprint is sold to them (usually for $300), and you can set up your own bot. It is focused for those firms that want to ask a lot of questions to their future clients and are looking for something very specific.
The LawDroid Voice tool, which is integrated into Clio’s management software, can be used to dictate notes or schedule appointments, among other functions. LawDroid does this through the dissemination of information provided by its clients. Thus, this information is shared beyond the company, and they achieve greater growth and an improvement in the case management system.
The customer always comes first, so if he wants to know how his bot is doing, LawDroid also takes care of it. This is usually the case when you want to implement a new recruitment system or when a new customer has just been acquired. Whatever the reason, the company does a constant check in how each case is going, which Tom Martin calls a «mile-stone bot». It works very simply, you write a message to the customer, or it is automatically sent, and it contains a link that takes you to see the status of the bot. What is more, you can even include videos or graphic images to illustrate the progress of the case.
As we all know, technologies are taking the legal field by storm, and the proof of this is the celebration of the Global Legal Hackathon in Madrid, during the last weekend of March. Although programmers are the main protagonists of these events, they are often unwilling or unable to participate in them. As a result, the idea is to invite people who are not experts in programming, in order to teach them that the technological process is not so difficult. Tom Martin states that: «if you know how to make a flowchart, you can make a bot in LawDroid in a weekend».
Finally, the interviewee says that he does not like comparisons, proving to be a modest person, as he has won 11 awards throughout his career as a professional. LawDroid is not looking for fame, but simply that the small entrepreneurs or small firms, i.e., his clients, manage to adapt to the technological era in the best possible way. Technology and the legal field walk hand in hand and these types of companies are trying to get the “mile-stone” out of the way of law.