What a whirlwind! From Mastercard HQ to Stanford, we’ve seen it all in 2024 ????
Happy holidays! ??
Tom Dreyfus and Sam Flynn here—2024 is basically over and what a ride it’s been!
For our December issue, we thought we’d look back at how we fared. What shaped the past 12 months for team Josef??
To start things off, back in March, our co-founder Kirill Kliavin stepped down to embark on new, exciting adventures. The team has evolved so much since, but we miss you, Kirill! In May, we all packed our bags for Vietnam for some serious strategizing and the best bánh mìs around. And ICYMI, we closed out the year with a lightning-fast funding round to supercharge Josef Q! ??
We can't wait for next year, but here are our top highlights from 2024.
Creating AI-powered Q&As is "so easy" on Josef Q says global insurance giant Bupa ??
This year, Bupa added tens of AI-powered Q&A tools to its suite of 40+ Josef document and workflow tools. We love this story! Legal first developed a Marketing playbook Q&A to answer all sorts of compliance questions. Then, they developed 10+ HR policy tools in less than a month! They followed these up with contract guidance tools for Workplace Relations and more. Read Bupa's story for the details.
“Unshackle knowledge with AI,” said adidas' Alex Herrity ??
Get information out of the “prisons” of Word documents and into the hands of people who need to know it, said Alex Herrity in a Fireside Chat in September. Alex explained, "Generative AI has put knowledge management on the map. It’s drawn attention toward the idea that there should be a more structured way that we deal with knowledge." We couldn't agree more! Watch the full chat here.
Responsible AI innovation at Mastercard ??
At Mastercard, we spoke on a panel with Chief Data Officer Andrew Reiskind on how in-house teams can get the most out of GenAI. Looking back, a key takeaway still stands true: the risks of AI come from overconfidence and under-confidence: overconfidence leads to sticky legal situations like the infamous Air Canada story while under-confidence means we all continue wasting 1 day a week looking for information. The answer remains responsible innovation!
Answering the question of the year: build or buy legal AI? ??
This question took us all over. One week we’re with 奥睿 , Mishcon de Reya LLP and DraftWise in London, discussing whether it makes more sense for teams to build or buy legal AI. (Spoiler: it all depends on the shape and size of your own team!) Then, fast forward and we’re in Sydney exploring what works in the Asia-Pacific with Claire Nuske from Bupa and Matthew Duncan from the Australian Retirement Trust. Read what Claire and Matt thought here.
And then, back to where Josef started: at Stanford ??
The Josef team was invited to present on some of the groundbreaking work we’ve been doing in legal AI at Stanford in November. So much has changed since Josef first landed at Stanford over six years ago, which Sam reflects on here. We can't wait to see what the next 6 years bring!
Happy holidays!
Tom and Sam
Josef Q offers the guardrails we need to build tools that can handle high-value, confidential information, giving us the confidence we need to deliver self-service experiences at scale
Claire Nuske, Head of Legal Operations, Bupa