In August, the international law firm Gunderson Dettmer, based in Silicon Valley, became one of the first U.S.-based firms to develop and launch an internal generative AI tool, aptly named ChatGD. As the firm’s Chief Innovation Officer, Joe Green, explained at the time, the decision to experiment with this technology was influenced by their clientele – mainly the world’s most innovative companies and investors.
Four months into implementing this AI tool, the firm has begun to identify what the technology can and cannot accomplish. This period allowed for tracking the tool’s adoption among the firm’s professionals, observing its usage patterns, and measuring the cost to the firm for providing this proprietary AI.
ChatGD was launched with two primary components – a general chat mode, similar to ChatGPT, allowing attorneys to converse directly with the large language model (LLM), and a component enabling users to query their own documents using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Utilizing RAG, lawyers can upload documents and then query the LLM, receiving responses based on the context provided by the documents. This not only permits lawyers to query the LLM based on their internal knowledge, but also enhances accuracy and minimizes errors.
As of today, nearly half of the firm has used ChatGD, with engagement and usage continuing a steady increase. More than 9,000 prompts have been submitted and completed across numerous conversation threads thus far.
Before employees were able to use ChatGD, they were required to complete initial training, either live or on demand. The training largely developed by John Scrudato, the firm’s Senior Legal Engineering and Data Strategy Manager, focused on understanding how LLMs and RAG function to ensure everyone has a baseline understanding of the technology and knows how to use ChatGD safely and ethically.
Green reports that ChatGD has seen various use-cases from drafting and editing emails, summarizing documents and articles, brainstorming legal language examples, to even writing a birth announcement, albeit a satirical one.
Surprisingly, the cost of deploying the AI technology was found to be less than anticipated. Green projects that the total annual cost to Gunderson Dettmer for providing ChatGD to the entire firm will be less than $10,000— a figure he refers to as “staggeringly low”. Continuous updates and enhancements are being made to the tool, with user feedback playing a critical role in this progress.
The original experiment of developing an in-house AI tool has given Gunderson Dettmer significant insights into the technology, helping them be more discerning consumers, as well as creating an opportunity to explore various uses of AI in a law firm environment.
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