In Episode 21 of X-Raised, MiAI Law CEO and award-winning barrister Laina Chan returns with a powerful message: AI isn’t just reshaping legal research, it’s redefining what excellence in advocacy looks like.
With over 30 years of experience at the bar, Laina draws from deep professional frustration to explain the origins of MiAI Law. “What all the large law firms are doing is paying for on-premises solutions to mine their own data,” she explained. “But they’re only going after low-hanging fruit.” MiAI Law, by contrast, was born from a bold decision not to follow the traditional route, and instead to tackle one of legal practice’s most complex pain points: true, evidence-based legal research.
After parting ways with a co-founder who resisted this vision, Laina went on to develop what she calls “the biggest increase to productivity for lawyers since CaseBase.” At its core is MiAI Law’s ability to not only retrieve precedent but to read and understand how later cases have applied it, and then use that intelligence to craft research memos with remarkable speed and precision. “We’ve revealed the black box,” she said. “It’s no longer about keyword search. It’s about delivering precise, logic-driven legal insights.”
This AI-first approach doesn’t aim to replace lawyers, but to elevate them. MiAI’s internal models identify key legal principles and issues across subject matter areas, allowing practitioners to clean up and finalize results with full transparency. Unlike other tools in the market, MiAI Law’s platform is built to be benchmarked, and Laina is quick to point out the stark difference between her solution and others like Harvey, which some firms have adopted but restrict from being used for core research tasks.
“Partners at big firms proudly say they use Harvey, but then admit they won’t use it for research,” Laina shared. “We’re not even in the same space, what we’re doing is far more complex.”
But with innovation comes responsibility. Laina is clear-eyed about the risks of deploying general- purpose language models in legal contexts. “OpenAI themselves have said their models aren’t for use in law or medicine, and for good reason,” she warned. “There’s no legal mind behind those systems. It’s like putting a litigant in person in charge of a case. That’s dangerous.”
MiAI Law’s model, by contrast, was built by lawyers, for lawyers, with legal reasoning and compliance at its core. “We cannot sell to anyone but lawyers,” Laina emphasized. “Our AI in the hands of the public risks discounting the value of hard-earned legal judgment. It’s not about AI versus lawyer, it’s about how we ever worked without it.”
Looking ahead, Laina believes legal AI will become as indispensable as case databases once were. “Once the education piece is addressed, this technology will let lawyers be productive from day one.” That’s the future MiAI Law is working to create: where lawyers aren’t just faster, but smarter and more empowered, without sacrificing rigor or trust.
As the legal industry navigates the balance between disruption and duty, firms that embrace domain- specific AI tools, built ethically and trained intentionally, won’t just survive the shift. They’ll lead it.
