BARBRI Swallows Startup ‘Lega’ To Teach Lawyers How To Talk To Robots
Sonia Hickey
“AI fluency” is now part of joining the bar before lawyers are let loose on the billable hour. BARBRI. The bar prep behemoth that still haunts your stress dreams has just acquired Lega, a generative AI platform founded by legal tech veteran Christian Lang.
We all know that “Generative AI” is the buzzword that refuses to clock out and every day brings a new wrapper, a new startup, and a new promise to revolutionize the way lawyers draft, review, and exist.
Amidst the chaotic gold rush to build the ultimate robot lawyer, the one key question remains, which is –Who is actually teaching the humans how to use this stuff?
While the financial terms of the deal remain tucked away in a confidential black box, the strategy behind the acquisition is loud and clear: BARBRI wants to own the educational sandbox for AI.
From Practice Tool to Educational Playground
Originally, law firms utilized Lega to build templates and test out GenAI use-cases in real-world practice. But under the BARBRI umbrella, theLega platform will now be used purely for learning and education purposes.
BARBRI’s massive existing footprint in legal education, now has them positioned at the front of the classroom for the AI revolution.
Think of the combination with Lega as a giant, risk-free sandbox where law students and practicing attorneys can mess around with prompts, build apps, and learn how AI behaves without the looming threat of hallucinating a fake case citation into a federal court filing.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, BARBRI co-CEO Lucie Allen accurately diagnosed the current state of legal tech: “We hear every day, there’s a lot of noise. And in that noise, we think that hands-on experiential training and learning is something that’s really going to make a difference.”
Instead of just telling lawyers what AI is, BARBRI is going to let them play with it. “The platform that Christian has is essentially enabling us to then provide a sandbox to learners to go in and experiment and build things and build confidence and build AI fluency,” Allen added.
Bridging the Biglaw Gap
Llaw schools are notoriously terrible at teaching practical technology skills. While you can graduate knowing the Rule Against Perpetuities backward, but still have no idea how to safely implement an AI workflow in a Biglaw environment.
BARBRI sees this acquisition as the bridge. They plan to take these sandbox environments directly into law schools, running workshops and hackathons to get future associates to “get their hands dirty.”
As part of the deal, Lega founder Christian Lang is stepping into the newly minted role of Head of Innovation at BARBRI.
Lang sees this as an existential moment for the industry. “AI is challenging all of us to rethink what it means to be a successful legal professional,” he said.
“Meeting that challenge will require more than adopting new tools or optimizing existing workflows. It will require us to reimagine how the best legal services are delivered, and how we define, train, and empower the legal professionals of the future.”
