We Built an AI Contract Analyzer That Lawyers Actually Trust. Here’s Why That’s Harder Than It Sounds.

A founder shares lessons from building LexiCheck, an AI contract analyzer designed to earn lawyers' trust. Key insights include why transparency (citing exact clauses with page numbers) beats accuracy alone, how RAG architecture enables explainable results versus opaque fine-tuned models, and the technical challenges of parsing messy legal PDFs. The post covers hybrid semantic+keyword search for clause detection, severity-weighted compliance scoring, and cost optimization using Llama 3.3 and serverless GPUs to achieve 91% lower inference costs than GPT-4. Core lessons: show your work, admit uncertainty with a 'NEEDS REVIEW' status, optimize for recall over precision, and position AI as removing tedium rather than replacing expert judgment.