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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2643 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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you don't hear about non-tech companies spending any substantial sums to use it. If they were to start charging a non-trivial amount for it, no one would pay, outside of a few edge cases

I don't see any mention of figures but there was the first regulatory approval of an AI-based law firm in England last month. https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/garfield-ai-authorised/

Law, medicine and finance are large service industries with notoriously steep fees that would gladly peel off a few billion to become more productive and competitive if they were allowed to. People might be slow to pay for image slop and virtual waifus but they'll happily pay up for things that matter. Will it scale to offset the expense of running the AI server farms? I don't know.

I'm a lawyer, and I'm not impressed by this product. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in the US, debt collection in small claims court is without question the simplest thing you can do, to the point that it's one of the few legal things I'm already comfortable telling people to go ahead and do themselves. The service they appear to be providing doesn't seem much different from a number of commercial products already available in the US. I can't see how this is meaningfully different than a software package that completes forms for you, or books that provide forms for you to copy and fill out. Hell, these days most courts and some advocacy websites have downloadable forms for stuff like this.

Aside from that, though, I'm not sure who this product is actually for. Individuals loan each other money occasionally, but it isn't that common given how easy it is to get credit. The website makes it look like they're targeting small businesses with unpaid invoices, but how many small businesses have unpaid invoices to consumers? I don't think I've ever bought a product where the vendor agreed to ship it to me along with an invoice. Most of these unpaid invoices are from sales to other businesses, and if other businesses aren't paying, it's because either 1. They can't pay or 2. They have a reason for not paying. The AI product seems set up to expect a default judgment, and it is the case that most debt collection cases result in default judgments. However, most of these cases are consumer credit cases initiated by banks. They're worth it for banks to pursue because most individuals have jobs with money regularly coming into bank accounts that can be levied by court order (FWIW, the AI product won't help you with this step of the process, which is much more difficult than getting the initial judgment). Most businesses that aren't paying their bills and aren't contesting them are bordering on insolvency. The reason most of these claims aren't pursued isn't because of legal fees, it's because the judgments aren't worth any more than the paper they're printed on.

This is aimed at small businesses serving businesses owned by Indians, who are notorious for stiffing their vendors on the bill.

That doesn't really change the crux of the issue, which is 1. This isn't much different than other products that have been around decades, and 2. It isn't going to help you collect on the judgment. Honestly, a how-to on the subject published by a reputable company like Nolo (in the US) is likely available at a local library and will provide a broad based knowledge that can be helpful to understanding the process, especially if something unexpected arises. Filling out AI prompts can't help with that. It can answer questions, but the software already comes with disclaimers that it's not legal advice, though I doubt the AI knows the difference and will keep itself from answering if it gets into that territory.

Probably not, no, but small business owners do not know this.

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