Introduction to Legal AI
Speaker

Legal doesn’t need to “get out of the way”.
It needs command and tools to guide the business effectively.
At Wordsmith, we’re building agentic AI—legal-grade assistants that handle redlines, escalate edge cases, and respond like professionals.
Not chat. Not automation. Agents.
Built for Slack. For Word. For email. For how legal actually works.
SUMMARY
In this introductory session, Wordsmith's CEO Ross McNairn explains the fundamental concepts of Legal AI.
Ross demystifies the core technology, from the foundation models built by companies like OpenAI and Google to the different ways your private data interacts with them, such as through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) or the context window. He also provides a simple framework for understanding the AI ecosystem, breaking it down into the infrastructure, foundation, and application layers.
Finally, the video explores how this technology translates into practical legal use cases and workflows, setting the stage for the rest of Wordsmith Academy, which will focus on legal-specific AI applications.
