Summary
Andreessen Horowitz partner Alex Rampell talks with Jay, co-founder and CEO of Eve, a legal AI company built for plaintiff law firms. The conversation looks at why the plaintiff side of the legal industry, the world of personal injury and contingency-fee cases, is larger and more distributed than most people in tech assume, and why it has historically gotten little from software.
Jay explains that the core constraint for these firms is labor. Because lawyers are paid only when they win, firms must pick cases carefully, and smaller claims often go unrepresented. Eve aims to handle a case end to end, from the first client call to settlement, so that attorneys can take on more cases. One example discussed is an LA firm that went from managing about 100 clients per attorney to 500.
The discussion also covers why raw model intelligence is not enough. Most plaintiff data is not scrapable because the vast majority of cases settle before litigation, and insurers hold information advantages through shared data and claims software like Colossus. Eve’s advantage comes from learning how real practitioners work, such as drafting demand letters against specific insurers. The conversation touches on AI’s effect on pricing, access to legal services, and how the economics of small law firms could change.
📺 Source: a16z · Published October 30, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
