This month ROSS Intelligence, a much-buzzed-about rookie in the $8 billion-a-year U.S. legal research industry, marked its one-year anniversary. The small Silicon Valley-based startup has combined IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence technology with its own proprietary innovations, aiming to create a cheaper and faster research tool for lawyers.
Unlike Lexis and Westlaw, which require lawyers to formulate searches using special connectors and search terms, ROSS allows lawyers to ask questions in plain English. The company maintains that its “machine learning” system, in which the computer becomes continually better at recognizing relevant case law and other resources, produces better results more quickly.
