Ride the Lightning

Robot Fisticuffs: Casetext’s CARA vs. Ross Intelligence’s EVA

February 1, 2018

Can you have a robot fight if one robot isn't there? Probably not, but Jake Heller, founder and CEO of Casetext, has a go at it. I read with interest earlier this week Bob Ambrogi's blog post about Ross Intelligence launching EVA, a free brief analyzer.

Casetext, which has its own brief analyzer (CARA), challenged ROSS to participate in a "robot fight" at Legaltech/Legalweek in New York since both companies would be there. The challenge, as reported by Bob Ambrogi, was to engage in a head-to-head comparison of the two products in front of a live audience.

ROSS declined to participate, but Casetext went ahead with it, creating its own EVA account and then running the same brief through both analyzers to compare the two platforms. A bit one-sided with one of the fighters acting as the referee as well but it made for interesting viewing.

Bob broadcast the "robot fight" on Facebook Live and you can find the video in his blog post. The video is roughly 22 minutes long. What is clear from watching it is that EVA is not nearly as feature-rich as CARA, nor is it as sophisticated.

However, Jake good-naturedly points out that it is FREE, which his product is not – and that, if you want to know whether a case in your brief has been overturned, EVA will do that for you. And anything free is cherished by lawyers. It is not possible to limit EVA by jurisdiction, and EVA tends to pull up a lot of older cases, so the result you are looking for may be buried a bit.

Jake says the results of a search are relevant to the query, but not necessarily to your case. There is, of course, a lot of merriment as CARA is declared the winner of the "fight", but there are a couple of points to emphasize – and Jake was good enough to point them out.

First, EVA is brand new to the scene. In a year, maybe two, Ross may make enormous strides with EVA in which case the "fight" might be much closer to call. Second, EVA is free – if EVA remains free, and continues to improve, this will be a great contribution to those who can't afford to pay for brief analyzers.

And one more thing: As Jake says, a little healthy competition in this space is welcome. And so it is. So if there more work to do ROSS, I happily welcome you to the party.

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