Not sure why I'm posting this but it's 12:30 pm, and I'm still at my desk after 23 hours so here goes.
I'm primarily a corporate lawyer. Spent a few years on the commercial contracts side at Hitachi, now solo, mostly the same kind of work. A civil matter had been sitting with me for a few weeks, client was waiting, I kept finding reasons to delay. Not my area. No junior. Didn't know where to begin.
Last night a guy named Sounak DMed me on Linkedin about something he's been building called Associate. I said fine, gave him 20 minutes.
I dropped the civil case into it just to see what happened. Vakalatnama, some WhatsApp screenshots from the client, party details, type of case. Didn't write a prompt. Didn't explain anything. Just dropped the files like I'd hand a folder to someone and say here, look at this.
It read everything. Understood what kind of case it was, who the parties were, what the client was actually saying in the screenshots. Then it just started working: built out the matter, flagged a limitation issue I hadn't clocked, drafted the plaint grounded in the actual facts it had pulled from my files, and laid out the research next to it. Not generic research. Specific cases, relevant sections, all linked so I could verify them.
The thing that kept getting me was that I hadn't asked it to do most of this. I dropped files and it figured out what needed doing.
I ended up going much deeper than I planned. By the time I came up for air it had a draft timeline, a list of documents still needed from the client, the plaint, the research. The whole shape of the case was just sitting there.
I'm taking it.
I don't know if this is what everyone else's experience has been like. But for me tonight it felt less like using a tool and more like having someone actually read the brief.