Magic Moments in Kangaroo Court
How our team legal research exercise doubled as a feature showcase.
What’s Kangaroo Court?
The engineers at midpage regularly compete in a legal research exercise we refer to as Kangaroo Court. I assign a simple legal research question, they search for answers, and then we have a group discussion.
Ultimately, I crown a winner who is awarded absolutely nothing. But we take the exercise seriously despite its low stakes. The goal is for the entire team to appreciate the common pain points that lawyers face when doing legal research. Plus, they deserve to experience just how magical the features they build can feel.
One of Yesterday’s Magic Moments
We were discussing an assignment yesterday and were delighted to see how helpful midpage is. Among a few slightly more complex tasks, the assignment involved finding cases that supported two propositions:
A few cases into his research, Ali grabbed a screenshot of two AI-generated comments (pictured at the top). Using his recent boolean search strings, chat history, and saved notes, midpage anticipated exactly the two propositions that he was searching for, identified them, and synthesized them in concise suggested comments.
Because these were exactly what he was looking for, Ali decided to "Keep” these comments. “Keeping” (or editing!) a comment further tailors the AI to your research issue, rapidly improving future suggestions. It also stores the comments and accompanying excerpts in your session’s notebook, allowing you to carry on with your research without having to keep track of everything yourself.
The Takeaway
Of course, the assignment was a rudimentary legal question to research. But this workflow — a low-touch integration of AI to help you spot issues and automate your notetaking process — works regardless of how nuanced your research issue is. You do not have to do anything besides run boolean searches, skim cases, and press “keep.”