Long read, June 1, 2025
what legal AI gets wrong about legal work
The problem
Every review team we work with has a version of this problem. What legal AI gets wrong about legal work rarely announces itself.
Volume changes the shape of the problem. At ten documents you can hold the exceptions in your head. At four hundred you need the exceptions written down and checkable.
What we do about it
We treat anything the system cannot ground in source text as unverified and show it as such. A visible gap is cheaper than a confident error.
In the current build this runs as part of the standard pass, so it applies to every document in the set rather than only the ones someone thought to check.
Where it breaks
Scanned originals with poor image quality remain the weakest input. So do agreements that were assembled from three precedents and never reconciled, which is common in long-lived supplier relationships.
The practical takeaway is narrow: write the exception down, point it at a source, and give it an owner.
Working notes from the Lawrs team. General information about legal technology and practice, not legal advice.