Startup Alley Competition Proves It Continues To Be All About AI
ABA TECHSHOW is off to a rousing start.
This year, as a favor to the ABA’s Family Law division, ABA TECHSHOW kicked off on February 14.
The ink is not even dry on our coverage of ALM’s Legalweek show in New York and we’re already in Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW. The two conferences started dancing around their scheduling over the pandemic and every time one tries to extend a two-month gap the other leaps right back.
In fairness, the two shows focus on slightly different audiences. Legalweek, by virtue of its venue, caters to a New York Biglaw audience (and maybe Midlaw). Owing to its association with the ABA, TECHSHOW leans more into addressing the concerns of small firms and solo practitioners. It’s not an official divide and there’s plenty of overlap, but no one will shout you down for describing the conferences this way.
Though it might be more accurate to call TECHSHOW an industry showcase because with each passing year it seems that more and more of the show involves other tech companies looking to scoop up enterprising new companies. A tone that’s set by the conference’s opening event: the annual Startup Alley pitch competition.
This year, 15 companies presented. If you were taking a shot every time someone mentioned “AI” then my condolences because you are now dead. If you included “machine learning” or “large language model” then you’ve died, come back as a zombie, and been killed again.
At least the competition didn’t afford anyone the opportunity to take this challenge with shots of 25-year-old Mortlach, the $1000 bottle of Scotch that past Startup Alley champ Universal Migrator began handing out the next morning. For the record, it is very smooth.
It’s not as though every participant had an AI story. Civille delivered a great pitch for law firm website consulting, boasting massive returns for clients elevating their search engine presence exponentially. But most companies were focused on the challenge of the moment: bringing generative AI to the legal space. Like 2nd Chair, building out an AI tool that firms can guardrail by choosing the universe of material the product draws upon for its answers. Or Paxton, who came in third in the pitch competition, building a bespoke legal large language model.
If the central theme of Legalweek was how unready most corporate providers were to show off their AI, Startup Alley offered the antidote, showcasing vendors diving right into the fray.
As one legal tech industry luminary put it, “we’re in the slog now.” The unbridled promise of AI that dominated last year has given way to providers putting in the hard work beating back the nasty outlier problems. But challenge breeds clarity. No one is going to know the right AI approach for lawyers until we get products out in the field tackling real issues. Startups are going to drive this process.
For the record, reading this story required you to take six shots. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
Well, I do, but that’s not the point.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
