MiAI Law is a product of the research desk: born from the frustrations of finding, testing and applying authorities at speed, and shaped into a system that treats legal reasoning as something to be shown, not guessed. Its first public launch was in London—a jurisdiction renowned for exacting standards—despite being designed initially for Australian law. That decision was not theatre. It was a statement about rigour, auditability and the universality of first-principles legal method.
1. Why London first?
London remains a global legal capital: a forum that prizes doctrinal precision, reasoned exposition and transparent sourcing. Launching there did two things. First, it tested MiAI Law against a sophisticated audience that expects evidence, not slogans. Second, it signalled our intention to build jurisdiction-specific capability that travels— beginning with Australia, moving immediately to the UK, and then to select US jurisdictions where doctrine and commercial practice demand depth rather than generic search.
The message from day one was simple: MiAI Law is built to be judged.
2. From pain point to product
MiAI Law began with a familiar problem. As a barrister, I wanted the systemised version of the knowledge every experienced researcher develops: knowing which principles matter, where the ratio truly lies, and how to assemble authorities coherently, fast. “Good search” was never enough; what mattered was audit-grade, jurisdiction-specific intelligence.
MiAI Law therefore relies on primary law only—legislation and judgments—and analyses each case systematically before any query is answered. Reports are produced from first principles, set out in IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion), and every proposition is footnoted to a pinpoint citation with a live link to the source. It is not a black box; the reasoning path is exposed.
3. Supercharging teams (especially juniors)
MiAI Law does not replace lawyers; it accelerates them—particularly juniors, who often carry the heaviest research load. In practice, that means:
- Speed with standards: the “grunt work” of surfacing and organising authorities is reduced, while reports remain court-ready and traceable.
- Better questions, better answers: users learn to frame issues The system’s structure rewards doctrinal clarity and discourages vague prompting.
- Space for strategy: partners can move sooner to advice and advocacy; juniors gain time to read the underlying authorities and build true doctrinal fluency.
Early adopters have reported two recurring effects: faster turnarounds, and the surfacing of arguments they “might not have seen” under time pressure. The machine does not argue the case; it reveals the threads so counsel can.
4. “Evidence-grade,” explained
In MiAI Law’s context, evidence-grade means three things:
- Source primacy: only legislation and judgments are used to ground
- Transparent method: the reasoning steps used to reach an answer are shown at the end of each report.
- Verifiability: every principle cited is footnoted to a pinpoint, with a hyperlink to the text. Users can trace the chain from issue to authority in a single view.
This is not a rhetorical flourish. Evidence-grade is what allows a lawyer to rely on a report as the start of a submission—after verification—rather than as a persuasive but opaque summary.
5. Guardrails and human judgment
No responsible system promises infallibility. Large language models are trained to answer; that nature must be constrained. MiAI Law is engineered to say “I don’t know” where the base cannot support an answer, and to keep the LLM in the role of classifier and organiser, not arbiter of truth. Even so, professional responsibility does not change: lawyers must read, test and own the analysis before relying on it in court.
6. Beyond Australia: a modular global footprint
Although Australia is the foundation, the roadmap is explicit: UK capability follows immediately (by design, given Australia’s doctrinal heritage), with targeted US jurisdictions thereafter (for example, New York, Delaware, California, Texas, and federal law). The platform is modular: jurisdictional modules sit atop a common, first- principles method so that outputs remain comparable in structure while faithful to local law.
The aim is not to cover the world quickly; it is to cover each jurisdiction properly, with the same audit standards.
7. A tool built by practice, not hype
MiAI Law is best understood as a research system that shows its work. It lowers the cost of rigour, widens access to high-quality analysis, and keeps judgment where it belongs—with the lawyer.
Launching in London first made that case in the most demanding forum available. The longer-term project is unchanged: evidence-grade legal intelligence, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, from first principles.
