Building a Law-Aware AI with Billions of Vietnamese Dong in Investment

Discover a groundbreaking AI project with billions of dong invested to understand the law down to the smallest detail.

The tech community is abuzz with news that a medium-sized law firm recently spent $35,000 – equivalent to nearly one billion Vietnamese dong – to hire a developer to build a completely private artificial intelligence system. Surprisingly, instead of criticizing the "wasteful" expenditure, the majority of opinions consider the figure "extremely reasonable" and even "dirt cheap."

The story begins when a developer named u/eeko_systems shared on Reddit about the biggest deal of his career. Instead of using readily available AI services like ChatGPT or Claude, this law firm decided to invest in building a completely independent "AI fortress," not dependent on any provider.

The system is built on Meta's LLaMA 3 70B model, deployed on the CoreWeave platform with a dual A100 GPU configuration – the most powerful graphics processors currently available for AI. The unique aspect is that all data and processing takes place entirely within an environment controlled by the law firm; not a single byte of information leaves their system.

To understand the complexity of this system, imagine a "super assistant" that can read and understand thousands of pages of legal documents in seconds, answer complex legal questions, summarize cases, and even analyze contracts in detail. All of this is done through a simple web interface that any lawyer in the firm can use.

The technology behind this system requires a sophisticated combination of many components. ChromaDB acts as a massive "digital library," transforming all documents into a data format that AI can understand.

LlamaIndex acts as an "intelligent secretary," helping AI search for and extract accurate information from mountains of documents. Meanwhile, n8n takes on the role of "coordinator," automating everything from uploading new documents to the system to sending notifications via Slack and email.

What impressed the tech community was not only its functionality but also its level of security. The system is equipped with JWT authentication, IP-based access control, and full activity logging. These are mandatory requirements in the legal industry, where information leaks can lead to serious legal consequences.

However, why is $35,000 considered "cheap" for such a system? The answer lies in the operating costs. Renting dual A100 GPUs on CoreWeave can cost between $6,000 and $8,000 per month, meaning the infrastructure costs alone for a year can reach $72,000 to $96,000. The $35,000 to set up the entire system is equivalent to only 4-5 months of operating costs.

Furthermore, if a law firm decides to build its own in-house AI team, it will have to spend at least $400,000 annually on AI, DevOps, and security experts, not to mention the time and risks involved in the development process. Enterprise solutions from giants like Microsoft or Google typically cost between $100,000 and $500,000, but still rely on third-party APIs – something many law firms cannot afford.

Interestingly, just as this story was being hotly debated, another significant event occurred. DeepSeek, an AI startup from China, just released a "scaled-down" version of its R1 model, capable of running on a single GPU instead of the dozens of GPUs used previously.

However, the emergence of DeepSeek also raises questions about the future. Is using technology from a Chinese startup compatible with the legal compliance requirements of American law firms? Will the smaller model's performance be sufficient to handle complex legal tasks? These are questions that law firms need to carefully consider.

Interestingly, while many other industries are still hesitant to adopt AI, law firms have shown surprising decisiveness. Perhaps this is because in the legal industry, time is literally money. The ability of an AI to analyze thousands of pages of documents in minutes instead of weeks could yield enormous profits.

AI has emerged and is competing in the legal industry in the US. Source: Master AI & You

Source: https://khoahocdoisong.vn/xay-dung-ai-ranh-luat-with-billions-of-dong-investment-post1545404.html