Midpage is a legal research and drafting platform leveraging generative AI to help litigators do better research and complete first drafts faster.
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Background
From a young age, Otto von Zastro-Marks, CEO and founder of midpage, harbored ambitions of becoming an inventor, a dream that began to materialize during his undergraduate years in computer science. During his studies, he embarked on his first entrepreneurial venture creating autonomous robots. This initial foray into start-ups ignited his passion for founding ventures. His academic journey continued into graduate studies, where he delved into large language models and developed a keen interest in retrieval augmented generation. Conversations with his lawyer friends, often about their professional challenges, sparked Otto’s curiosity in legal technology.
Otto conducted thorough research, engaging with over 50 legal professionals to identify areas in legal practice ripe for innovation. He landed on litigation research as a key area fraught with inefficiencies. With this insight, Otto assembled a team of expert programmers and computer scientists, some from companies like Meta and Google, to initiate the development of midpage.
Launched in beta in September 2023, midpage quickly gained traction in the legal community. Otto emphasizes that in the legal field, even a beta version is expected to perform flawlessly. Midpage was therefore built to be reliable from the beginning. The platform has seen rapid adoption, with about 5,000 legal professionals in trials. Initially, midpage focused on solo practitioners and small law firms due to ease of onboarding beta users, but the platform is equally adept for use in mid-sized and large law firms.
Problem Solving with Midpage
Legal research is notoriously labor-intensive, often involving the review of hundreds of cases. This task, while critical, consists of repetitive and time-consuming elements that detract from the more nuanced aspects of legal practice. Midpage addresses this by streamlining the research process, filtering out irrelevant material, and allowing lawyers to concentrate on their core competencies. The platform supports the entire journey from initial legal inquiry to delivering client responses, positioning itself as a tool that amplifies legal expertise. Unlike other legal research tools, midpage leaves the lawyer in control of the research process. At each stage of the research process, the legal professional using midpage is supported by the technology but able to see what’s happening and determine what happens next.
Use Cases
Midpage enhances various aspects of the research process, including:
- Identification of relevant case law based on specific fact patterns.
- Analysis of key case elements pertinent to particular legal issues.
- Simplified citation support with hover-over summaries.
- Efficient integration of case excerpts into notes, complete with direct links and correct citations.
- Logical organization of research notes, including highlights, parentheticals, and relevance markers.
- Facilitation of collaboration and document generation, such as memos or client emails.
- Upcoming multi-user support for enhanced collaborative efforts.
Technical Functionality
Midpage leverages GPT-4, among other technologies, and is not confined to any single large language model. Its comprehensive content set includes data from the Free Law Project, Harvard, and PACER. This approach allows for a diverse and robust research experience.
Target Demographic
The platform is designed for legal professionals across various environments who engage in extensive legal research, which means it’s suited to solo lawyers all the way up to large law attorneys and paralegals. Although midpage is currently focused on law firms, it would be equally useful in corporate legal departments.
What Makes midpage unique?
Midpage distinguishes itself with the seamless way it integrates generative AI technology, and the fact that it is specifically tailored for the way lawyers conduct litigation research. Its unique features, including a Chrome extension, GPT-plugin, and Word plug-in, facilitate seamless research across multiple platforms, enhancing the organization and analysis of legal precedents and research materials. Midpage Portals, a new entry-level product from midpage, allows users to leverage the aspects of midpage that gives lawyers the ability to access a hover from a citation showing a case is about, what the outcome of it was, read the quoted excerpt, and compare facts to your case, is available wherever lawyers do their research.
