4 ms·

I’m curious how this increased throughput happens. You’ve accurately stated that AI isn’t as rigorous as a trained attorney. Doesn’t that mean that every sing

• juiceland 8d ago
  You don’t need a trained attorney to schematize data. The LLMs are used to make the data easier to understand and manipulate.
  • cromka 8d ago
    They'll also hallucinate and change meaning in the process of extraction and "schematization"
    • margalabargala 8d ago
      Not necessarily. Depends how you use it. "Write a python script that breaks down this PDF by X feature" would not hallucinate anything in the PDF. Certainly you could trivially double check that all text in the extracted JSON was in the text layer of the PDF.
      • jeffbee 8d ago
        How much experience do you have with LLMs exactly? It would be consistent with my experience if Claude stuck in a line of python that just emits a JSON literal with no justification, potentially buried in a large program where an untrained person might not notice it. I don't even trust them if the output consists of structured data paired with source images from the PDF, because I've experienced LLMs fabricating the source rectangles to match the output. I only use tools like this by asking for programs, because as you note LLMs are good at that, and the verification process consists of tool calls to legitimate PDF manipulation tools so I have some confidence everything is above board. Even then I only do this for hobbies, not anything that matters.
        • terminalcommand 8d ago
          Lawyer here. I used to trust Claude as hallucinations are near non-existent now. However for large volume tasks such as due diligence exercises, they still happen. We also tried Legora's tabular review, there were also numerous halucinated provisions in our due diligence exercise.
          • rayiner 8d ago
            Junior associates hallucinate too...
            • NateEag 8d ago
              And when they do, you can train them or fire them, and they learn not to do it. LLMs change not a whit, and there's no one to take responsibility for the failure (and thus no way to fix it). As the new variation on the old theme has it, "A computer can never be held accountable, and so very many people are trying to get them make management decisions."
              • IanCal 8d ago
                You can’t train people to never make a mistake, particularly when doing highly repetitive work like this. You must build your systems to account for that regardless.
                • enraged_camel 8d ago
                  Yes, exactly. Humans are non-deterministic as well, just in different ways. A tired human can make all sorts of errors for example, regardless of how much training they've had.
                • NateEag 8d ago
                  For sure. But they do learn and improve. The models don't (yet).
      • chrisjj 8d ago
        That's a recipe for disaster in my experience. I tried it (with Claude) on a simple tabular bank statement PDF, and it transposed two amounts, placinh each against the other's description. And the bot assured me the result was cotrect. The chance of a human checker catching such corruption is low.
        • margalabargala 8d ago
          Interesting. Did that PDF have a text layer or did you ask Claude to OCR it? If the latter I'm not surprised at all.
          • chrisjj 8d ago
            Text layer.
    • ferngodfather 8d ago
      Doing similar-ish things with Claude, it's helpful to have something to ground it. For instance, if you can say: "Refer to the database schema in x.sql as your source of truth for the database structure we want to import into*. Do not invent data, tables or columns that do not exist. Carefully match all output against this database schema and do not create output that doesn't exist if it does not match the schema, simply skip it." You will end up with a far better result in my experience. Gotta treat it like a child.
      • chrisjj 8d ago
        > Gotta treat it like a child. "Sorry for that, Your Honour, but we gave that case prep work to a child."
    • ivraatiems 8d ago
      They do, sometimes. That's why the review still has to happen. But now it's comparing already filled columns on a spreadsheet, not copy-pasting every single thing from an (often uncopyable) PDF.
      • chrisjj 8d ago
        > But now it's comparing already filled columns on a spreadsheet ... with a PDF, right? > not copy-pasting every single thing from an (often uncopyable) PDF Obviously the PDF is copyable, else your bot would not be copying it.
        • ivraatiems 8d ago
          "Copyable" in this case means you can highlight and copy paste text instead of manually retyping it.
    • juiceland 8d ago
      But it gets it right like 99% of the time so human attention can be put towards catching the 1%, not entering data from one table to another and then catching that human’s mistakes.
• edmundsauto 8d ago
  Reviewing something takes less time than producing it.
  • lolakutty 8d ago
    I...don't think that is universally true.
    • edmundsauto 8d ago
      Few things are. It also doesn’t require standards. “Stamp this diff” culture is everywhere even before AI. A stamp is literally easier than anything else. Whether that is useful measurement I suppose depends on the circumstances.
    • eru 8d ago
      Yes, but empirically in this case, it seems to be true.
• ivraatiems 8d ago
  Yes, remember that these are effectively random PDFs in various different designs and formats, some of them not editable or even OCR'd. It took a human attorney 20-30 minutes on average to manually copy-paste data from these PDFs into a spreadsheet (while also fixing any errors they found in the document and re-checking for quality). Now, the AI copies everything into the spreadsheet in a small amount of time, and then the human reviews it. It takes maybe ~5-7 minutes to scroll to the appropriate pages in the document, read the lines vs the spreadsheet, and make corrections. So you've gone from 2-3 items an hour to ~8-10 items an hour. Maybe you could pay someone to develop an OCR/ML application that could do this. But that project would never be profitable, even with the time savings. At the cost of a couple Claude subscriptions, it makes sense.
  • barrenko 8d ago
    I'm doing some public court records processing for bankruptcy cases (interested mostly to seek out corruption in big national cases), and yes, the "variousness" of random PDFs is exactly the issue. Trying to get the cost for a whole case down to a minimum. Sample is around 300 court dates, shy under 1k files. At best I'm building a claude skills file.
  • newAccount2025 8d ago
    Does the human find enough bugs that they stay on guard, or just rubber stamp everything without really looking at it? It’s hard to stay vigilant when stuff looks plausible.
    • eru 8d ago
      Complete speculation: you could instruct Claude to hide one random mistake in every document. And Claude should write down the mistake in a sealed envelope, so it doesn't make into the database. A review that doesn't find the mistake counts as invalid.
      • k4tsu 8d ago
        This is what bag scanners at airports do - the hit rate is so low and the job so boring the software projects fake contraband onto the imagery. Fail to spot the knuckledusters and expect a chat with the manager.