Having spent years in the legal field, Hilary Bowman knows that attorney-client conversations are at the heart of practicing law. But she said conducting these conversations effectively can be difficult; the lawyer has to spot issues as they arise, while establishing trust with their client.
To solve this issue, Bowman founded Querious: a startup built around an AI tool for conversational intelligence. The tool is designed to help attorneys navigate meetings with their clients to offer the best possible service in the most seamless manner.
Bowman is trained as a healthcare regulatory lawyer. She came up with the idea for Querious when she left a meeting with a client wishing she had asked better questions—only for the client to propose using AI to summarize a medical record. Because Bowman is a healthcare lawyer, she knew the privacy considerations but was unfamiliar with AI in this context.
“I thought, what tool could help me through this conversation?” Bowman said.
She knew there were legal tech tools out there, but she said none of them helps an attorney navigate a conversation in a virtual meeting. Bowman also considered the fact that AI can “hallucinate” at times, making up laws or cases—which would of course be unacceptable in the context of real application with clients. Factoring in these concerns, she was able to design the tool that became Querious.
How Querious works
To prevent complications stemming from the issue of hallucination, Querious operates without specific legal citations, instead offering more high-level suggestions for attorneys—prompting them to consider privacy issues or employment contracts, for example.
In a virtual meeting, an attorney can link their Querious bot so it shows up as a meeting participant. During the call, Querious will open up a sidebar that flags potential legal issues and lists questions. The attorney can expand any legal issue on the sidebar for a short summary.
“Our goal is to keep the attorney focused on the conversation, engaging with their clients and only feeding them the most important information in the meeting when it matters most,” Bowman said.
After a meeting, Querious sends the attorney an email that summarizes the call and the legal issues presented and suggests next steps.
“This just reduces the administrative burden of tracking what you did in that meeting,” Bowman said.
Querious users can also access their personal dashboards listing their completed and upcoming meetings, as well as more detailed summaries of the questions raised during the meetings.
Attorneys can link Querious to their calendar so it will auto-join their meetings. Currently, Querious is compatible with Microsoft Teams and available in the Microsoft app store, and Bowman said she is in the process of getting her project linked with Zoom and Google Meet.
Bowman works with several engineers who have helped develop the technology, as well as advisors for sales, marketing, and finance.
The product is sold in a B2B model to attorney users—either to law firms or companies that have in-house counsel. Bowman said her initial target market is small- to medium-sized firms that are more likely to be open to new technology due to limited staffing and resources.
The price is $149.99 per month, with a discount for an annual subscription.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Querious
Co-Founders: Hilary Bowman (CEO), Eugene DeVilliers (Head of Engineering)
Founded: 2023
Team size: 8
Location: Raleigh
Website: www.querious.ai
Funding: Raising pre-seed
Querious can work for any type of law, and the software flags potential legal issues that may even be outside of a given attorney’s practice area. The email that Querious sends after a meeting can be forwarded to other lawyers in a law firm, whose expertise may be needed to help them better prepare for a negotiation.
Querious is one of 15 finalists for Startup Alley, a tech show hosted by the American Bar Association. Bowman will be competing in Chicago in April.
In the meantime, Bowman and her team have been demo-ing their product with a free version for attorneys in a variety of practice areas.
“We’ve seen it already, there’s some attorneys that just light up when they see it, and they see the possibilities of it,” Bowman said.
