Credibility over Hype: What We Learned About Legal AI on the Conference Floor
Working at the edge of AI development isn't about sitting in an ivory tower; it’s about understanding the messy, loud, and often confusing reality of a massive tech conference floor.
Last week, SquarePact was out in the field. While I stayed behind to focus on a few other exciting projects, our VP of Engineering, Animesh Nighojkar, was manning the booth. He walked ten aisles of a venue that covered everything from the US military to the latest in SMB tech.
The feedback Animesh brought back confirms something I’ve suspected for a while: The AI industry, especially in Legal Tech, is currently built on a foundation of "pure trust" that hasn't been earned yet.
When Animesh spoke to attendees, the most common question wasn't about our architecture or our vision. It was: "Why can’t Claude just do this?"
Here is the reality: Most people’s high opinion of the "big" models is based on polished, cherry-picked, marketing videos. In a world of AI hype, customers are committing to general-purpose tools because they've been told those tools can do everything.
But when you actually walk the aisles and talk to real people, you see the gaps.
Animesh also noted a striking lack of legal technology, which is surprising for one of the biggest tech expos in the state.
Perhaps they're preparing for the looming crisis in AI tech that few are talking about: The Cost Barrier. Large API providers are going to raise prices. It’s inevitable. The underlying expense of advanced AI is too high to stay "cheap" forever.
Our strategy, and our long-term moat, is built for that reality. We are creating back-end routines that efficiently switch between expensive LLMs and cheaper, classic AI or language models. We aren't just giving you a shallow AI wrapper; we are giving you a cost-efficient engine that uses industry-specific, pre-tested algorithms to save you money over the long haul.
We're also making the tool more powerful where you actually work. Our Word add-in brings SquarePact agents directly inside of Word using native Word APIs. This means SquarePact won't just "talk" to you in Word...it will actually act within the document. More on this soon.
Technical superiority is one thing. Verifiable credibility is another. We’re building both.
