Practitioner-Led Benchmarks
Vendor-funded benchmarks are marketing. Practitioner-led scorecards are evidence. Meet the new gate between vendors and buy-side counsel.
- Tiempo de lectura: 9 min
Qué cubre este capítulo
- Why Vendor Benchmarks Lie
- Practitioner Scorecards
- How to Read a Benchmark
Los capítulos del curso están escritos en inglés. El resto de la Academy está traducido.
TL;DR
Vendor-funded benchmarks are marketing. Practitioner-led benchmarks are evidence. A new wave of independent scorecards - run by lawyers, not by analysts on vendor retainers - is becoming the real gate between vendors and buy-side counsel.
1) Why vendor benchmarks lie
Vendors design tests where their tool wins. They pick the jurisdictions, the doc types, the evaluation rubric, and - quietly - the comparison set. Then they publish a chart with a green bar.
The result: every vendor claims to be #1. By definition, six of them are wrong.
2) Practitioner-led scorecards
legalbenchmarks.ai - lawyer-led, public methodology, tasks drawn from real practice.
Vals AI / VLAIR - blind auto-evaluation across multiple legal AI products, using rubrics designed by practicing attorneys.
Both refuse vendor money. That's the entire point.
3) How to read a benchmark
• Who funded it?
• Are the test cases public?
• Are the graders disclosed?
• Is the methodology reproducible?
• Are confidence intervals shown - or just point estimates?
• Did the losing vendors get a chance to respond?
Rule of thumb
If a vendor refuses to participate in independent benchmarks, that is your benchmark.