EvenUp wants to automate personal injury settlements — to a degree

Image credits: Jim McGuire/Getty Images

Millions of personal injury cases are settled in the United States each year, and only a few go to trial – but the vast majority remain unresolved. This leaves lawyers guessing what they should propose as a settlement price, often resulting in victims not being compensated.

This is what prompted Rami Karabibar to launch until you arrive, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to create legal documents for evaluating injury cases. Aimed at clients in the legal field, the platform attempts to use raw case files, including medical records, police reports and invoices, to generate letters demanding the proposed compensation.

“We’re on a mission to level the playing field in personal injury cases,” said Karabibar, who previously worked in private equity, venture capital and venture-backed startups.

Karabibar co-founded EvenUp with Ray Miszanik, a two-time businessman whose father was permanently disabled after he was hit by a car during a police chase. The Miszanik family only received 10% of the average compensation for this type of accident, in part because their lawyer did not know the appropriate compensation.

EvenUp aims to handle all categories of personal injury cases, including car accidents, police brutality, child abuse, and even natural disasters. To do this, Karabibar, Meszanik and EvenUp’s third co-founder, Sam Mashhad (a former litigator), built a database of private settlements — including hundreds of thousands of medical records — and trained AI to estimate fair compensation based on the details of each case.

EvenUp extracts relevant information from the documents and organizes them into “claim packages” that outline the legal and factual basis for the personal injury claim and include the compensation request. EvenUp is designed as a self-service solution for attorneys, paralegals, and law firms, annotating notes and transcripts of raw records into “injury law optimized” medical summaries.

“The more documents and cases we see, the better we can be at preparing application packages, and the better we can be at maximizing case outcomes and reducing costs,” Karabibar said. “EvenUp reaches deeper into legal workflows with a higher level of accuracy than other AI assistants, from extracting data from initial documents, to evaluating case value, to creating final application packages that bring it all together.”

And as Karabibar points out, EvenUp isn’t the only startup applying AI to the arduous — and monotonous — task of drafting legal documents. legal, which emerged from incognito several years ago, is building software to automate the process of allocating standard documents such as non-disclosure agreements and wills. in another place, atrium The software digitizes legal paperwork and builds apps on top to speed up fundraising, commercial contracts, stock distribution, and employment issues.

But EvenUp claims to be one of the first companies to handle personal injuries—an area of ​​law practice that isn’t necessarily highly respected. The so-called “settlement mills”, which charge between 33% and 40% of the total awards awarded, settle a large number of cases without necessarily focusing on maximizing the value of each claim.

EvenUp could change this by normalizing personal injury litigation practice with the help of artificial intelligence, Meszanek notes.

“By harnessing the potential of technology, we can create a future where financial pressures are untainted or the representation enjoyed by the pursuit of justice,” Miszanik said via email. “It is time to embrace innovative solutions that streamline the claims process, empower individuals, humanize the process and make sure that no one gets a small fraction of what they deserve. That’s why we built EvenUp: Equal Opportunity for Personal Injury Victims.

EvenUp appears to have acquired investors, who recently pledged $50.5 million in the company at a valuation of $325 million (according to a source familiar with the matter). Bessemer Venture Partners led the latest round, a Series B, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Behance founder Scott Belsky and legal technology firm Clio, bringing the total raised from EvenUp to $65 million.

But can the technology deliver on its promises, and address the lingering legal and ethical implications?

With any AI technology, bias is a huge concern. Algorithms trained on biased data can amplify those biases, perpetuating existing inequalities and injustices. For example, a ProPublica analysis for 2016 It found that the widely used algorithm was twice as likely to misclassify black defendants as having a high risk of recidivism than white defendants. One could imagine EvenUp’s AI recommending artificially high or low amounts for personal injury compensation as a result of an imbalance in the data set.

And what about privacy? EvenUp did not disclose the source of the medical and personal injury documents it used to train its AI — nor whether it took steps to notify the original owners of those records.

That’s assuming again that the technology works as advertised, even. If there are any sweeping conclusions from the generative AI boom, it is that even today’s best AI algorithms are far from perfect. (See: Microsoft’s Bing chatbot spout Misinformation about the vaccine and writing hate speech from the point of view of Adolf Hitler.)

If EvenUp customers share these concerns, it is not clear how eager they are to adopt the platform. Karabibar claims that EvenUp has “the best trial attorneys” and “the largest personal injury law firms in America” ​​among its clients and is “close to turning a profit.”

No doubt some are chasing the opportunity to reduce recording expenses while maximizing revenue. Karabibar does not deny it.

“Injury lawyers rely on contingency cases, offering a fixed percentage of the value of the case. Any increase in case outcomes directly affects their revenue, while also increasing the amount clients receive.

But Karabibar also argues—somewhat optimistic in my opinion—that automating aspects of the filing process could encourage litigants to “focus more on the human side of their work.” He’s also careful to point out that EvenUp won’t replace lawyers directly. But, reading between the lines a bit, it’s hard not to see how some paralegals, most of whom work on a contract basis, might find themselves out of work if the technology were to be widely adopted.

“They will be able to support injury victims through legal action, and advocate for the fair results their clients deserve,” he said.

We’ll see if that’s the case. EvenUp, however, has broad ambitions, with plans to cover document creation at both the pre-litigation and litigation stages tailored to each company, jurisdiction and case type. Karabibar believes EvenUp will eventually be able to handle 70% of the key documents in a personal injury law workflow.

“We are well positioned to continue growing despite the turbulent economy, and we believe that our products will become more important with time,” Karabibar said. “The legal phrasing has undergone a dramatic change due to the advent of generative AI. Legal professionals will need to quickly adapt to this change or compete to be left out of the profession by more tech-savvy competitors.