“Bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”
Bill Gates
All too often, those of us in the legal tech writing community report on things that won’t happen but should, things that aren’t being adopted but should be, or things that are outright failures. This tendency is particularly true when it comes to access to justice issues. We often cite the failure of technology to make any dent in the problem.
Granted, we have a serious access to justice gap that may get worse before it gets better.
But as I have written before, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the good things that are going on that do impact access to justice for the underprivileged and, for that matter, everyone. I recently wrote about New York City’s use of AI to help people in various small and doable ways. I recently came across another tool called descrybe.ai that is doing the same.
descrybe.AI
So here is the official description of descrybe.ai: descrybe.ai is a free, AI-powered legal research platform whose stated goal is to democratize access to legal information. It utilizes generative AI to summarize over 3.6 million judicial opinions and other materials from the Harvard Caselaw Access Project, making them searchable and understandable for users without requiring specialized legal knowledge.
descrybe.ai was launched in the summer of 2023. A new and improved version was launched in October of last year.
What descrybe.AI Is, Really
The above official version is nice. But to get a real sense of the company you need to hear from its founders Kara Peterson and Richard DiBona. Kara focuses on marketing and business development, while Richard handles the technical aspects of the platform.
Its advisors some of the biggest names in legal tech including Dazza Greenwood, Dr. Megan Ma, Rebecca Fordon,