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MTS · 2 min · Oct 25, 2026
LLMs help lawyers find the needle, but leave the haystack
Prinz says an expert can extract a useful legal insight from a long LLM answer, but the output can overwhelm less experienced readers. For him, the tool cuts research time while leaving substantial review work.
Prinz
Prinz is a lawyer and AI anon.
Theo Jaffee, Host · Co-founder & host, MTS
One of the first members of a16z's new media team; earlier hosted the Emergent Ventures-backed Theo Jaffee Podcast.
About this segment
Prinz says an expert can extract a useful legal insight from a long LLM answer, but the output can overwhelm less experienced readers. For him, the tool cuts research time while leaving substantial review work.
From “OpenAI Math Breakthroughs Show We Are Near Full RSI | Prinz”, Oct 25, 2026. Watch the full episode
Answers “Which jobs will AI replace, and which are safe?” See all 43 answers
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“So if I'm a specialist lawyer, if I know what I'm doing, I will immediately extract the needle and it'll be incredibly helpful.”
Takeaways
- A specialist can extract the useful insight from a long answer.
- Prinz says an LLM can cut his search from ten hours to one.
- A 35-page memo can bury points that fit in two pages.
In this episode
Full episode- 7:56RSI requires models to build more capable successors6:51
- 1:16Cyber risk feels like an early COVID uncertainty6:15
- 21:06Scientific discovery could drive unusually fast growth3:32
- 14:40RSI cannot replace the data and experiments a problem requires3:53
19:26LLMs help lawyers find the needle, but leave the haystack1:49
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 19:32
Chargebee.com. What are the current issues with LLMs writing legal memos right now? I think it's, you know, LLMs produce a lot of slops still. like right now i feel like if i feed even the best tell alarms um like a legal question right i am going to get output that will be a haystack with a needle in it. The needle will be there. So if I'm a specialist lawyer, if I know what I'm doing, I will immediately extract the needle and it'll be incredibly helpful.
- 20:12
So instead of me coming up with that needle for 10 hours, the LLM will give it to me in an hour and it's perfect. But the rest of the haystack, like for a non-lawyer, right? For a first-year associate or something, is um like it's it's it's not very useful and so what happens is that in the context of a legal memo it's the same point right so if i ask an llm a complicated legal research question it'll give me a 35 page memo for something that can be said in two pages and much sharper and much quicker right a lot of the time its answers are going to be correct if you use the right model It's a right reasoning effort, as opposed to, you know, like Sonnet 5.5 instant or whatever.
- 21:04
But it takes a lot of processing to get past that result. Right.