Eve Launches Revolutionary LLM Solutions for the Legal Profession

In 2020, seasoned tech industry veterans Jay Madheswaran, Matt Noe, and David Zeng set out to transform the legal landscape by leveraging the capabilities of large language models, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Their mission? To develop a platform that enhances lawyer productivity by streamlining processes related to legal discovery and research.

“Legal professionals often spend countless hours manually reviewing documents to extract crucial insights,” Madheswaran shared in an email interview. “This task has become overwhelming and is costing law firms a substantial amount of money.”

A 2012 survey highlights this issue: legal professionals, including lawyers and paralegals, reportedly spend over 11 hours each week addressing document creation and management issues—six of which are deemed unproductive. This inefficiency equates to a loss of $9,071 per lawyer annually, which can add up to nearly $1 million for a firm employing 100 lawyers.

Recognizing this problem, Madheswaran, who previously invested in early-stage startups at Lightspeed Venture Partners and served as the head of engineering at Rubrik—where he collaborated with Noe (then leading machine learning initiatives) and Zeng (an engineer)—founded Eve. This AI-driven platform is designed to tackle legal tasks such as document review, case analysis, client intake, and research.

Recently, Eve emerged from stealth mode, securing $14 million in funding from Lightspeed Ventures—Madheswaran's former firm—and Menlo Ventures.

"Eve can be tailored to meet the diverse and evolving demands of various legal cases," Madheswaran explained. "Our platform comes pre-equipped with legal-specific skills and knowledge, enabling legal professionals to realize value immediately—no engineering effort required.”

Eve offers an array of applications focused on automating what Madheswaran calls "low-value" tasks in litigation, transactional law, and other practice areas. Users can customize these applications to fit their specific needs, seamlessly integrating Eve into their daily operations and workflows.

To address concerns about potential inaccuracies—often referred to as "hallucinations" in generative AI—Madheswaran assures that the platform is designed to encourage comprehensive citations and direct quotes, consistently prompting users to verify the information generated.

"Eve is built to scale and evolve along with a law practice," Madheswaran noted. "There’s no need for complex configuration or extensive onboarding."

Eve is part of a growing trend of “AI assistant” tools in the legal sector. Notable competitors include Harvey, which provides AI-driven legal answers; Zero Systems, aimed at automating professional services like those in law firms; and Casetex, acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million in August.

However, Eve and its competitors share a common obstacle: persuading firms to adopt this technology. A recent poll conducted by the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Wisconsin law firm Lowenstein Sandler revealed that only 64% of in-house counsel have utilized AI for legal tasks. The primary deterrents cited were legal risks and ethical concerns.

Despite these challenges, Eve has achieved notable traction, boasting a client base of “over a dozen” firms employing “several hundred lawyers.” The 15-person startup aims to utilize funds from its latest investment round to strengthen product development and enhance its market presence.