Eve chief executive Jay Madheswaran sits down with Alex Rampell, a general partner at a16z, to argue that cheaper legal work does more than trim costs at firms that already exist. It can make an entire class of cases economically viable that lawyers previously could not afford to take on.
Eve automates plaintiff-side law from the first client call through settlement. Madheswaran says some practices using it have lifted the number of clients a single attorney manages from roughly 100 to 500.
Firms that once priced every matter by the hour now find routine claims worth pursuing when the labor behind them shrinks, and that shift changes who can get a lawyer at all.
The pair also discuss whether agents will eventually negotiate directly with other agents, and what that would mean once most of the hours in a case are machine hours. For Madheswaran, the interesting question is not whether software replaces attorneys but how much more a small practice can promise a client once the economics stop punishing volume.
Eve sells access to that automation to plaintiffs’ firms rather than to large corporate practices, a market where caseloads are wide and margins thin. A shop that manages five times as many matters with the same headcount can bid on work it used to decline.
Rampell presses on what breaks when both sides of a negotiation run on agents. The conversation ends without a firm answer, but with the sense that pricing power in legal work may migrate to whoever holds the client relationship rather than whoever bills the most hours.
