Max Junestrand has consistently said Legora treats the model layer as swappable, selecting across frontier providers rather than building the product around one.
OpenAI didn't need to name Legora and Harvey in the second paragraph of the launch post.
They are pre-empting the obvious interpretation of Astra for Law: that moving this far up the legal stack puts them in direct competition with their biggest legal AI customers.
“Don't worry, they can build on us” is a pretty conspicuous message to include on launch day.
They have clearly thought about some pessimistic outcomes.
>Max Junestrand has consistently said Legora treats the model layer as swappable, selecting across frontier providers rather than building the product around one.
Vendor-neutrality for LLMs is such a weak thesis all around, whether for providers or consumers. It weakens the product by being promiscuous and gains no material benefit at all.
LLMs are magic byte(byte) functions, it doesn't make sense to say "we have different providers for magic".
Different flavors of magic require different ritual components and in the name of all that is stable and production worthy, please don't get a necromancer to do your civil construction magic.
Vendor-neutrality helps reduce lock-in, and OpenAI and Anthropic are big enough that the reduction is valuable.
Switching from ChatGPT Enterprise to Legora at my firm was a godsend, it's so much better for legal work, even with the frequent changes to the underlying models.
They are cutting into their market. They can dress it up however they want, they might not be competing for enterprise contracts yet (hence the fluff statement), but they will.
Try Spanish roundabouts. On the whole, poorly designed, implemented and regulated. On roundabouts with two or more lanes, laws favour those on the outside lane, so everyone takes the outside lane even if they are travelling 3/4 of the way round. As a result drivers who are in a position to take an exit, do not take that exit. In addition, indicators are not used by most drivers, or they simply leave their indicators on all the way round. In addition, it is not allowed to exit a roundabout from the inside lane even on to a two lane exit. In addition many roundabouts have three lanes to enter onto a two lane roundabout, or two into one, etc. No one knows the rules, or follows them, and no one seems to care, from the civil engineers right down to the end users. The only winners are repair shops.
In comparison, UK roundabouts are civilised examples of harmonious intellectual etiquette. Enjoy them.
[source] I learned to drive in Swindon, home of the Magic Roundabout.
I live in the UK, drive occasionally in Spain due to Spanish in-laws, and agree wholeheartedly. I didn't know about the "outside lane has priority" rule though. I'd noticed it happening, but just thought it was a national quirk rather than gaming the system.
Reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic" speech, where he talked about the man in the arena:
> It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Stefan Sagmeister talks about taking 5 years of your retirement and interspersing them into your working years in this great talk, pertinent moments at 01:30-02:00:
The best part of interailling for me was turning up to a major train station, looking at the giant departure board, choosing an enigmatic destination and just getting on the train. No booking or reservations or even planning at any point.
Quite a few countries (France, Spain, Italy for starters) require seat reservations in advance for any long-distance/high-speed trains now. And worse, they have a quota for passes, so even if the train has space, you might not be able to reserve a seat and therefore get on the train. A real shame as it makes it far less flexible than before.
For Switzerland, that's only true for the special tourist train panoramic carriages on the route, there are normal trains running on the same routes, too, that don't require reservations.
> But, as you get older, there's a certain joy in making plans in advance.
Am I the only one who feels the opposite? I used to take great care in making plans, knowing what's up ahead, knowing what I should know and so on. Spontaneous moments like "Lets go to X" were very infrequent. Nowadays, as a Proper Adult, I much more like going places without knowing anything about them, with as little plans as possible, figuring out what the place is from the people I meet there, and only start reading about the place once I'm there.
I fall somewhere in the middle these days- I really like knowing in advance that I have a place to sleep each night and that I have a way to get there, but then just do whatever I feel like in the moment for everything else.
We’re just finishing a two month Norway-focused motorhome jaunt. We planned the ferry from UK to Rotterdam (both directions) and two campsites in the Netherlands and Germany. After that it was two campsites ahead at most. Ended up visiting 21 campsites with no wild camping needed.
We’re both somewhere on some spectrum (and in our fifties) and it has been occasionally stressful for my partner. But we more often want to stretch a visit somewhere than curtail it, so flexibility has been pivotal to getting the most out of the trip.
We’ve identified five or so camps that we’ll definitely revisit next year or 2028, but they’ll be part of another freewheeling trip, I hope.
In general I’m a planner, a contingency-identifier and a worrier, but when we’re on the open road most of that goes out the window.
I never really planned in my youth, however as I'm older I have more responsibilities and planning in advance. We've just booked part of our summer family holiday for example
> however as I'm older I have more responsibilities
Yeah, same here, I guess that's why I'm opting for less planning, not more. I guess some people are just wired differently, that's what makes the world so interesting probably :)
Thanks, great to know. I hear you on at least knowing where you might sleep. Age 18-23 even this isn't that critical, when 'beach' or 'park' are viable answers.
For faster/intercity trains, it is still like that in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and most of central and eastern Europe [0]
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal & Sweden require seat reservations, as do most international services
Making reservations varies from easy to a complete pain
Note that doing that in Ireland for intercity will result in you being _severely_ overcharged. Dublin to Cork is like 20 euro if you book in advance; I think if you buy the ticket in the station it’s over 60!
It’s fine for commuter stuff, of course, but I assume that’s the case everywhere.
Then you get situations like a last minute (ie: knew 30 days in advance) trip from Munich to Berlin where we found it cheaper to rent a newish mid-range Mercedes and it for two.
Sure we had to actually do the driving, but hard to turn down a journey on the autobahn as a tourist.
The Interrail reservations/supplements are fixed price (or for some SNCF trains there are two price levels as the train fills up). But their number is limited, so in a way the advice is the same.
I've taken Amsterdam-London with Interrail many times, usually €35, sometimes €57, often sold out. So yeah, two price levels; Eurostar is basically SNCF.
Those were normal reservations, not Interrail ones, which I explicitly was talking about, trying to get the conversation back on track to Interrail which is the subject of TFA. Those high prices are what I meant with "sold out" above; in that case you get the prices for normal reservations listed instead of the Interrail ones. They are usually marked as such, though, e.g. on RailEurope it'll say "Rail Pass doesn't apply for this trip". Pretty big difference.
This is absolutely needed for media companies in London, some of whom may pay freelancers many months after invoicing and only if the freelancer repeatedly reminds them and escalates towards legal threats. When I ran such a company we made a point of paying people the same day they invoiced in order to stand out as being great to work with, it was the easiest win ever.
They should give the data to people who ask, which will be a snapshot in time presented in a spreadsheet. Then what you are paying for is the interface that shows you who clicked yesterday with a thumbnail and a link to their profile, and who will click tomorrow, as long as you keep paying. But refusing the download option is not on.
OpenAI didn't need to name Legora and Harvey in the second paragraph of the launch post.
They are pre-empting the obvious interpretation of Astra for Law: that moving this far up the legal stack puts them in direct competition with their biggest legal AI customers.
“Don't worry, they can build on us” is a pretty conspicuous message to include on launch day.
They have clearly thought about some pessimistic outcomes.
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