In this episode of the Slow Hunch, I spoke with Jake Heller, co-founder and CEO of Casetext, a legal tech startup that pioneered the use of large language models in the legal industry.
Jake and his co-founders built Casetext over a decade — going through multiple pivots before eventually finding PMF as an AI tool that helped lawyers do better and faster legal research. In 2023, Casetext was acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million.
In this conversation, Jake recounted how an early relationship with the research team at OpenAI got them access to GPT-4 (before the launch of ChatGPT!) and how they decided to hard pivot over the course of just two weeks.
As a former lawyer himself, Jake has a unique take on the challenges of building and selling cutting-edge software in an industry that has traditionally been a late adopter of tech.
This was a really fun conversation (you can probably tell because it’s longer than our usual episodes).
Hope you enjoy!
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