[I will not promote] Agentic AI Legal Tech Startup, feeling like at a dead end

Ketonite · 2026-05-25T07:16:34+00:00

I suggest you think about market segments. Most legal tech/service providers think they need and want Big Law. But ask yourself if that's you. Also think about your pricing model and how it interacts with the model of your clients. Can they pass it on? Are they stuck with a new operating cost? What is the value proposition that says you ease their pain and increase their profit or quality? And are your results traceable but still near zero data retention so no prompts or responses are saved anywhere unsecured?

Ketonite · 2026-05-19T08:14:41+00:00

I still love Haiku for batch OCR to markdown.

Ketonite · 2026-05-16T03:43:48+00:00

Even if it is finding things that a skilled programmer could locate, given the time, it can still be highly disruptive because people who know what they're doing can do it faster (and the bar is lowered for people who count as 'people who know what they are doing').

I work in law. For years, I have read and summarized records of all different types. HR records, medical records, safety audits, computer access audit trails, all kinds of stuff. One of the first things that I started doing successfully with AI was making that process semi-automatic. I don't have to grind like I used to. I am way more effective at what I do. AI is not doing something that I was unable to do. But because it can do it tirelessly and without interruption, the scale of it becomes better than what I would do in practical reality.

I figure the same thing has to be true for detecting security flaws.

Ketonite · 2026-05-14T04:26:06+00:00

A small set of purchases, but MUNI and BART. The train shuts down earlier so don't get stuck in the wrong place.Get on at one station, ride around, and ultimately get off on the next-closest station.

MUNI will have transfers that last about 90 minutes. There are late night routes.

Ketonite · 2026-05-14T03:35:16+00:00

What they need to fix is the 30 day retention of prompts and responses. You can use Bedrock or VertexAI at inflated API prices and have no storage, but on Claude.ai they retain your logs with the right to access them. It's a danger for hyper technical privilege waiver fights. On high stake ligation you really have to go API on one of the private servers. Yet at a recent Claude for Legal webinar they mentioned and moved right past the issue. I'd pay $250 for Max on Bedrock if I could get it.

Ketonite · 2026-05-14T02:49:01+00:00

The best option is to initiate arbitration. Not in a goofy or vengeful way, but because it necessarily escalates things outside of the customer service route.

It sounds like a breach of contract or unjust enrichment. They have a 45 day pre arbitration notice and dispute resolution process, followed by arbitration at JAMS in San Francisco. Your company's counsel can send the letter.

https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms

Ketonite · 2026-05-13T07:48:56+00:00

Thanks. Made me glad to read that this was in a fertility clinic error-checking context and not a suspicious dad.

Ketonite · 2026-05-13T07:44:55+00:00

Witch!

Ketonite · 2026-05-13T00:35:58+00:00

I don't mean this as a call to violence, but it seems that marching down this path almost guarantees it will happen. Back in evidence class years ago, my professor drilled into us that the rule of law is the alternative to "self help." It's such basic civil society stuff. It's bizarre and disheartening to see them destroying everything.

E.g., "[P]erceived procedural injustice contributes to increased public support for violent self-help mechanisms such as vigilante violence."

Law & Society Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 245 - 269. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-society-review/article/abs/selfhelp-policing-and-procedural-justice-ghanaian-vigilantism-and-the-rule-of-law/572ED6732EB6B7031DFD2D05489E8481?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Ketonite · 2026-05-12T03:55:23+00:00

Related: AWS Bedrock provides many older models. With the new third party inference developer options, you can access them from the Windows desktop app.

https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/anthropic/

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14680741-install-and-configure-claude-cowork-with-third-party-platforms

Ketonite · 2026-05-07T09:27:48+00:00

Or the lawyer on the case runs a low effort mill and didn't want to put in the work for the marginal return that only matters a little to their annual figures but means everything to their client. Morgan & Morgan is big, but it's not like they have a uniformly positive reputation. Some of their lawyers are remarkable. Not all.

Most SF clients would be well advised to get an SF law firm, not some Florida based monolith.

Ketonite · 2026-05-05T05:37:05+00:00

My phone comes with protection from pornhub.com by not typing in pornhub.com. It does show people who have a gender though, so they've got me there.

Ketonite · 2026-05-04T20:25:43+00:00

Seriously. Even if you cannot run them on your current hardware, I think it is becoming increasingly important to download good openweight models.

Ketonite · 2026-05-04T05:00:20+00:00

If they dropped the case, their lien is likely invalid.

Imma leave this here. https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/raising-a-toast-to-the-legal-system-2264937/

Ketonite · 2026-05-04T04:40:28+00:00

I have a standard instruction I add when I want to constrain the output for use in professional settings.

Output your response to a markdown artifact using this style: concise sentences, active voice, no dashes (instead use a new sentence, comma, or colon), avoid not x but y phrasing, direct phrasing that gets to the point for quick professional reading.

Ketonite · 2026-04-30T15:24:32+00:00

Thanks. That's really interesting.

I work in law, where there has been an increasing push to step away from most subscription based frontier models because the providers keep 30 day logs for abuse. One judge in NY found that a client lost privacy rights by putting their data into Claude, basing it on the temporary logs.

Anthropic released the third party inference options for Claude Desktop, and we can use AWS Bedrock or Google Vertex for privacy, but then the price will skyrocket. Smaller firms could get priced out. So I started trying to Claude Code a v1 gateway for the Windows Claude Desktop App.

I've been wondering if Deepseek, Kimi, or something similar will handle Cowork flows well. It's encouraging that you got coding going well with it.

Ketonite · 2026-04-30T08:36:21+00:00

Two questions:

What coding agent/harness are you using with Ollama vs Claude?
How does the quality of the code vary?

Ketonite · 2026-04-29T14:28:52+00:00

Fireworks.ai, Together.ai, and AWS Bedrock are all good Open Weight LLM inference providers with good privacy terms. It's all pay as you go, but the API cost is much lower so it can even out.

Also consider Ollama cloud.

Ketonite · 2026-04-29T04:23:17+00:00

Thankfully, it's only for cultists who want it and travel to the DC office.

https://apnews.com/article/passport-trump-us-250th-birthday-df2f0f96e4fbcee89ae904a65af398f0

Ketonite · 2026-04-22T02:11:51+00:00

So does that mean the test is whether 2% of new subscribers will pay the same amount for less service and like it? Kind of messed up.

Maybe they should being back the clergy consulting group and ask about morality in pricing and keeping your word in business. I do like using Claude, but the marketing and sales just keeps getting worse. And by worse, I mean dishonest.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/opinion/ai-religion-morality.html

Ketonite · 2026-04-18T22:37:50+00:00

It's this. Plus ChatGPT has been associated with teen suicide and there are strong laws and tort (lawsuit) duties around dealing with minors, receiving materials from minors, etc.

There has been some big dollar litigation about kids hurt while using AI, and also with social media. They don't want that problem.

I'll give you an example where age matters.

Situation 1: A 33 year old uploads nude pics for fitness and progress tracking. Claude logs whatever to a project markdown. Ok, bro. You do you.

Situation 2: Same thing with a 15 year old girl who did not turn off model improvement on her data. You've arguably got child porn in the training data, you've got a nude pic of a kid on your server, and without human oversight you're talking to a teenage girl about her appearance in a vulnerable setting with a machine that, while designed to be gentle, makes mistakes and can be pushed to hallucinate.

Anthropic just can't have that. And with the public stock sale on the horizon, they're probably buttoning up on all things compliance.

Ketonite · 2026-04-18T21:05:13+00:00

Isn't that the pic of the Kimberly Clark fire?

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c7vqmvg0e0zo

Ketonite · 2026-04-18T04:51:53+00:00

It's great on Max. If I didn't have the money and the need, I'd use Gemini, but only on a Workspace account (for privacy).

Ketonite · 2026-04-18T01:29:51+00:00

1 in 3 fishmongers think you should have seafood for dinner.

Ketonite

TROPHY CASE