Jamie Caramanica, DISCO’s SVP of Engineering – Interview Series

Jamie Caramanica, is DISCO’s Senior Vice President of Engineering.

DISCO brings artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and data analytics to the practice of law so attorneys can focus on what matters most: securing justice for their clients and winning the most important disputes in the world.

What inspired the creation of the Cecilia AI platform, and how does it align with DISCO’s overall mission?

Cecilia was created as part of DISCO’s mission to “make law better,” and aims to empower lawyers with sophisticated tools that allow them to concentrate on what truly matters: securing justice for their clients and winning legal disputes. This drive has been a consistent force for us since we introduced our first AI-driven features several years ago. Over time, we’ve continued to enhance our tools as the technology developed with the goal of helping lawyers drive better outcomes and win more cases. And the rise of generative AI technologies has allowed us to take this mission further, leading to the creation of the Cecilia AI platform.

Cecilia was designed to integrate seamlessly into legal workflows and aligns perfectly with our goal of using technology to simplify the legal process. Whether it's in eDiscovery, case building, or document review, Cecilia AI gives lawyers advanced tools to get to the facts of their case more quickly, which ultimately empowers them to provide better service to their clients. Each innovation we introduce is focused on streamlining legal tasks, reducing manual work, and helping lawyers make more informed decisions.

Can you elaborate on the specific innovations introduced in the Cecilia AI platform that are tailored to meet the needs of legal professionals?

Cecilia introduces several tailored innovations that address the core tasks lawyers perform. For our eDiscovery users, a key focus is on evidence investigation and document production. Cecilia Q&A, for example, allows users to ask natural language questions across millions of documents and receive precise, citation-supported answers, rapidly speeding up fact-finding efforts. This lets users drill down into document citations, tag key data, and move swiftly into the review phase.

Having a firm understanding of the case narrative and witness testimony is critically important. Cecilia offers features like Single Doc Q&A, Deposition Summaries and Auto Timelines, which assist legal professionals in generating timelines, identifying key entities, and being able to receive AI-based suggestions that further streamline the review process.

Another more recent feature is Cecilia Auto Review, which is particularly useful in the initial stages of document review. By allowing users to define tagging criteria and natural language descriptions, the tool can review and categorize large document sets in hours instead of days. This allows attorneys to work more efficiently, reducing the time spent on manual tasks while improving the quality of their case preparation.

How does DISCO address the skepticism surrounding AI, particularly concerns about hallucinations and inaccuracies in legal tech applications?

At the core of DISCO’s AI strategy is a commitment to transparency, and ensuring that lawyers are empowered to leverage the technology in a safe and responsible way. AI should ultimately be viewed as a tool that can enhance the practice of law by automating manual tasks, allowing lawyers to focus on exercising their judgment rather than sifting through massive data sets.

For example, when using Cecilia Q&A, the platform provides not only the AI-generated responses but also citations from the client’s own data to show the evidence backing that answer. By embedding these supporting references, DISCO ensures that legal professionals can have confidence in AI outputs while still maintaining control and oversight over final decisions.

How are legal professionals currently using the Cecilia AI platform in their daily workflows? Could you share any success stories or notable use cases?

One notable success story came from an Am Law 50 firm using Cecilia Q&A in a high-stakes case involving over three million records. Traditional search methods were falling short due to the generic nature of the behavior they were investigating. However, by using Cecilia, the team quickly identified a crucial email that provided evidence of misconduct, fast-tracking their investigation and leading them to what the team described as the “pot of gold” document. The tool was able to help the firm reduce the time spent on fact-finding by 87%, allowing their lawyers to bypass irrelevant documents and get straight to the issues that mattered.

Another example involves a top litigation boutique that struggled to find documents proving one entity’s control over others. After weeks of unsuccessful searches using traditional methods, they used Cecilia and discovered a key document within hours. The AI understood the concept of “control” even though the exact word wasn’t present in the document, highlighting how Cecilia’s ability to interpret context can uncover critical information that might be missed with conventional keyword searches.

How do features like Cecilia Q&A and Cecilia Timelines enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of legal work, particularly in complex litigation matters?

In today’s fast-moving legal environment, the high volume of documents, multiple parties involved, and the layers of expert testimony can make managing a case extremely challenging.

Cecilia Q&A allows legal professionals to ask natural language questions and get answers that are not only fast but also supported by citations from the case documents. This eliminates the need to play a guessing game with search terms, and instead, gives attorneys the ability to focus on analyzing the key facts and strategies right from the start. In a complex case with millions of documents, this can drastically reduce the time spent on document review and discovery.

Cecilia Timelines further aids in organizing and understanding the chronology of a case. By automatically generating a timeline of key facts within minutes of uploading a document, lawyers can quickly grasp the narrative and identify pivotal moments. Each fact on the timeline is linked to the document text, allowing for seamless fact-checking and further exploration. In matters where timing and factual accuracy are crucial, these tools offer a competitive advantage, empowering legal professionals to build stronger, more well-informed cases.

 In what ways does Cecilia AI empower legal professionals to streamline tasks such as witness summaries and document reviews? How does this technology improve their chances of case wins?

One of our goals is to reduce the time it takes for legal professionals to uncover critical evidence, thus improving their preparedness and positioning for success.

For witness testimony, DISCO has a tool called Deposition Summaries, which provides concise, AI-generated overviews organized by topic or chronology. This makes it much easier for lawyers to quickly identify the key takeaways and prepare for further questioning or cross-examination.

Additionally, Cecilia Auto Review enhances the document review process, particularly for first-pass reviews. Lawyers can set criteria and natural language descriptions for specific tags, and Cecilia will efficiently categorize documents based on these parameters. These tools are meant to accelerate the review process, and allow legal teams to be laser focused on finding the most relevant information. The faster lawyers can identify crucial evidence and understand the case’s broader themes, the better they can develop winning strategies.

How does Cecilia AI provide a competitive edge for legal firms and departments in managing large-scale document reviews and creating case strategies?

By automating much of the review process and providing powerful AI-driven insights, Cecilia allows law firms to deliver faster, more informed results to their clients, while also positioning them as agile and tech-forward in a competitive market. And for corporate legal departments, technology solutions like Cecilia AI can enable in-house counsel to allocate resources more effectively toward strategic decision-making and risk management.

Given the sensitive nature of legal data, what measures has DISCO implemented to ensure the security and compliance of the Cecilia AI platform?

DISCO has robust AI principles and guidelines, and we are deeply committed to making sure client data remains private and secure at all times. We also ensure that client data is never used to train a generative AI large language model (LLM) for general purposes. This ensures that data ownership always remains with the user, minimizing data leaks and cybersecurity risks.

Our security and engineering teams work closely together to ensure that all solutions meet the highest industry standards. Security reviews are embedded into the code development process, with every new feature or update undergoing thorough vetting before it gets deployed. These measures have allowed DISCO to maintain and build trustful relationships with our clients, so they can confidently tap into the full benefits that come from leveraging AI.

 What advancements do you foresee in the integration of AI within the legal sector over the next few years? How is DISCO preparing to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving landscape?

Generative AI will continue to be a disruptive force in the legal sector. DISCO is committed to staying ahead of the curve by continuing to constantly evolve our AI capabilities, and one of the key advancements we foresee is the further integration of AI tools that can help legal professionals manage not just large volumes of documents, but also interpret complex legal concepts while providing more sophisticated insights. AI will become even more adept at understanding case strategies, building arguments, and helping lawyers make decisions faster and with greater confidence. We recently conducted a study that showed nearly 75% of legal practitioners are either already using generative AI or plan to do so within the next couple years, suggesting the profession as a whole is on the cusp of significant transformation.

DISCO is already preparing for this future by investing in research and development in AI. Our AI team works closely with our product team to ensure that we are not just adding AI for the sake of innovation, but identifying meaningful areas where AI can make a tangible difference for our users. This focus on practical, user-driven AI development will help us stay at the forefront of AI innovation in the legal space.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit DISCO. 

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