August Introduces Agents for Law Firm Productization
Legal AI platform August has launched a new feature called Products, designed to assist law firms in transforming their legal services into marketable products. This innovative approach aims to streamline the productization process by employing agents that utilise a law firm’s existing playbooks and templates, while ensuring that a lawyer reviews the output before it is delivered to clients.
The concept of productization in legal services is not new, with firms exploring this strategy for over a decade. For instance, Allen & Overy's AOSphere was an early example, using rules based systems and document automation. However, the integration of generative AI and agents has the potential to significantly enhance this approach.
This method also offers law firms an opportunity to generate revenue from routine legal services. The principle behind this is straightforward: a service can be developed once and then provide a continuous source of income.
Typically, these productized services are offered on a fixed fee basis, making them attractive to both law firms and clients.
Riyaan Bakhda, a founding engineer at August who was instrumental in the development of August Products, stated that law firms can now leverage their expertise to create recurring revenue streams, akin to software companies. He explained that once a firm determines what services to offer, August’s orchestration layer automatically constructs the application and integrates it with the firm’s agents that operate based on the firm’s precedents and playbooks.
The agents are designed to improve over time; when a lawyer makes corrections to an agent's work, these adjustments can be saved as skills for future use, thereby enhancing the agents' effectiveness with each case.
David Fischl, a partner at Hicksons in Australia, shared his positive experience with the system, noting that the agents work from precedents crafted by their expert lawyers. He emphasised that the firm retains control over the final output, ensuring it aligns with Hicksons' standards while providing clients with fixed price certainty.