Cecilia's Journey with Talking Tree: Revolutionising Legal Support for SMBs

After leaving Meta to join the executive team of her current company, Cecilia experienced firsthand the challenges of scaling legal operations for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). 

"Everything was limited, from process to resources to time and even headcount. Coupled with endless data chaos, the few members of our team ended up working days, nights, and weekends just to keep up with the workflow," Cecilia recalls.

This wasn't just an isolated issue; many other SMBs with solo General Counsels or small teams faced similar challenges. 

This inspired her to start Talking Tree.

Talking Tree (https://talkingtree.app) is a suite of AI products aimed at reducing legal costs for SMBs.

Their flagship product, Redwood, is a smart repository with a built-in AI legal assistant, deploying a custom RAG architecture. "Redwood was created to address the headcount issue so that companies who cannot afford to add another paralegal or contractor can still receive the help they need at a fraction of the cost," Cecilia explains. 

Paid subscriptions range from $10 to $50 per month, and the company is currently saving one client at least $50k annually. Additionally, Talking Tree has three other products in the pipeline, with one already in beta. 

These products will integrate with Redwood to offer a seamless legal solution.

Target Users, How to Reach Them and Biggest Challenges

Talking Tree's target customers are leadership teams, including legal leadership, of SMBs with under 1000 employees who want to save on overhead costs. As a practising attorney, Cecilia has a robust network of key players in the legal industry. 

"Currently, we have grown organically to a handful of customers in our 2.5 months as a corporation. We intend to increase our advertising efforts after we exhaust our current leads," she says.

The biggest challenge Talking Tree has faced is tackling the double-edged sword of Generative AI creativity. "Because legal is a fairly conservative industry heavily dependent on accuracy, hallucinations create greater risks for legal than they would for departments such as marketing or communications," Cecilia notes. 

To mitigate this issue, their NLP expert built a custom RAG architecture to limit the flow of additional context to only relevant information. While it doesn't eliminate hallucinations altogether, the system provides an improved level of accuracy compared to current market incumbents.

Funding and Influences Behind the Decision

Talking Tree is currently bootstrapped and operates off its generated revenue. "We hope to seek investment funding once we have increased our ARR and increased our company’s valuation to a reasonable level," Cecilia explains. 

This approach has allowed them to maintain control and focus on product development and customer satisfaction without the immediate pressures of external investors.

Talking Tree has clear short-term and long-term goals. In the short term, they aim to:

1. Grow their customer database and improve their product based on feedback.
2. Launch complementary products to Redwood, providing a full suite of solutions for their customers.

Their long-term goal is to offer a more cost-effective legal solution for SMBs, ensuring they are not forced to use the proverbial steamroller to crush walnut-sized problems.

Cecilia concludes, "We plan to achieve this by maintaining a user-centric approach, continuously gathering and analysing user feedback, and staying ahead of industry trends through ongoing innovation and adaptation."

Cecilia's journey with Talking Tree highlights the importance of identifying real-world problems, leveraging technology to create innovative solutions, and maintaining a relentless focus on customer needs.

With a strong vision and a practical approach, Talking Tree is poised to revolutionise legal support for SMBs.