“With [Josef], answers still come from Legal, but we don't have to spend our time doing it at scale.”– Wendy Chow, General Counsel, Cityblock Health
In this article, Josef Co-founder & CEO Tom Dreyfus explains why Josef’s focus today goes beyond efficiency.
It’s not just about helping lawyers work that little bit faster, but about empowering teams across the entire business with trusted, self-service legal tools.
Tom Dreyfus, Co-founder & CEO, Josef
What we’re seeing instead is far more interesting: hundreds of focused solutions that chip away at specific problems. Taken together, they’re quietly reshaping the way legal work gets done.
And there’s a clear split emerging.
Some tools are built to help lawyers do their day jobs better, acting as co-pilots that draft faster, summarise smarter, and make the day a little easier. Others are built to deliver work directly to clients or to the business through self-service tools.
That split matters because it shapes who buys what, how those tools are built, and how much impact they really have.
It’s no surprise that most law firms are investing in co-pilots. Time-based billing rewards efficiency only up to a point. Tools like Harvey and Legora let lawyers do the same work faster without changing the business model too much.
In-house teams, on the other hand, have different incentives. They’re measured by impact, not billable hours. They’re under constant pressure to scale, to say “yes” more often without burning out their team.
That’s why they’re reaching for both types of tools: co-pilots that make their people more effective and self-service platforms that help the business help itself.
This is where the real transformation is happening.
“With [Josef], answers still come from Legal, but we don't have to spend our time doing it at scale.”– Wendy Chow, General Counsel, Cityblock Health
At Josef, we’ve learned that unlocking self-service means solving a very specific problem: trust.
If a lawyer uses a co-pilot, they can check the work before it goes out. But if a self-service tool is answering questions or generating contracts on behalf of legal, it’s representing the function to the entire business. That’s a whole different level of responsibility.
To make self-service viable, the AI has to be something legal and compliance teams can actually control. It needs to be accurate, transparent and explainable.
In practice, that means designing for three things:
Cityblock Health’s General Counsel, Wendy Chow, captured this perfectly when she talked with my co-founder Sam about creating AI Q&A tools with Josef. She said the key wasn’t just speed; it was confidence.
“The business copying the EIN (Employer identification number) out of a document is no different from me doing it, but they still want Legal to give them the answer so they’re 100% sure they’re not messing things up.”
“With [Josef], answers still come from Legal, but we don’t have to spend our time doing it at scale.”
An example AI Q&A tool that answers business questions around Delegation of Authority
AI in legal isn’t a single category; it’s a spectrum.
Co-pilots are inward-facing and augment professionals. Self-service tools are outward-facing and empower the business.
Josef exists to make that second part possible.
Our platform helps legal and compliance teams create tools they can trust, whether that’s automating Q&A, generating contracts and documents on demand, or running workflows like intake. It’s how teams unblock and drive the business forward while focusing on the higher-value work that really matters.
Because Josef’s AI is built with control and transparency baked in, professionals can stay firmly in charge. They can see what’s happening, iterate quickly, and keep improving.
That is what trusted self-service looks like.
When legal and compliance teams take ownership of AI, not just as users but as creators, something shifts. They move from being reactive to proactive. They stop being the bottleneck.
The business gets clear, accurate answers when it needs them. The lawyers get to focus on complex, strategic, human work.
That is the future we’re building toward at Josef. Not “AI lawyers,” but empowered professionals with the right tools for the job and complete control over how they are used.
Explore how you can empower the business with self-service Q&A, contract and workflow tools on Josef.
We'll be in touch soon to arrange a time to speak.