descrybe.ai, a free legal research platform that uses artificial intelligence to enhance access to the law, today announced a platform redesign, more nuanced and accurate search results, summaries of judicial opinions in Spanish, and more. We have launched a major upgrade that includes: You’ll see a simplified plain summary in English and in both English and Spanish.
As I wrote about descrybe.ai last March, it uses AI to generate summaries of court opinions and make them searchable. Its mission is to democratize access to legal information and level the playing field in legal research.
With today’s upgrade, descrybe.ai has rebuilt search from the ground up and created new summaries for every case using a modern, large-scale language model. This has evolved significantly since desrybe.ai first started producing summaries about two years ago.
“Since our launch, we have learned a lot about how to successfully apply AI to legal research,” said co-founder Richard DiBona. “This reimagined platform is a direct result of spending endless hours perfecting our architecture, prompts, and processes, as well as feedback from our users and the gaps we see in the legal tech space. It reflects.”
Search results include an AI-generated summary of each opinion. Users can choose to view the summary in Spanish or in a simplified format.
The search interface has been redesigned to allow users to select the state they want to search from a dropdown instead of a list in the sidebar. When a user performs a search, the results page displays related cases along with a summary of each case.
“The overview is better than ever,” DiBona told me during a recent preview of the upgraded platform with co-founder Kara Peterson. “They’re much more accurate and much clearer.”
Today’s upgrade adds an option at the top of the search results page that allows users to instantly translate the summary into Spanish. Additionally, users with lower reading levels can choose to convert the summary to Simplified English or Spanish.
The simplified version provides an overview at an 8th grade reading level.
This means that each summary is now available in both Standard and Simplified English, and Standard and Simplified Spanish. The simplified version is at a 5th grade reading level.
When a user clicks on one of these summaries, they will be redirected to a page with the full opinion and will also see a longer AI-generated opinion summary. Cases are not translated and remain in English.
Peterson said the simplified outline was proposed by several legal aid organizations the firm works with as a way to increase access to the law for people with limited language skills. .
The translations are created using AI, and DiBona said descrybe.ai verified samples of the translations by native Spanish speakers to ensure they were accurate.
The summary is also available in Spanish and Simplified Spanish.
In addition to getting summaries in Spanish, you can now search in Spanish as well.
With the latest model, DiBona said the descrybe.ai update is now able to capture more of the nuances of opinions and searches. “It goes much further than a keyword search by understanding what users are saying and finding connections to case law.”
As of today, descrybe.ai includes 1.2 million judicial opinions from state appellate courts and supreme courts in seven states: California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. The company says it expects to receive 3.6 million appellate opinions from all 50 states by the end of the year.
Although the company is working on new paid features, the basic legal research platform will continue to be free to all users, Peterson said.
“We know that no tool, no matter how great, can solve the access to justice crisis,” Peterson said. “But if enough of us in the legal tech space prioritize the use of AI to improve access to the law and access to justice, we will collectively We can move the needle.”
