We built Beagle+, a legal AI chatbot for BC. It's scary good.

by Chris McGrath | Apr 3, 2024

Note: To learn how to build a chatbot based on your organization's proprietary data, attend our webinar on May 8.

Over the past year my team and I have been working with People's Law School to build Beagle+, an AI chatbot that fuses GPT-4 with their proprietary data. We quietly launched a month ago and watched the conversation logs flow. (All conversations are anonymous, and PII is automatically scrubbed in real time.)

What we're seeing are accurate, empathetic answers to people's questions about the law in British Columbia. Consider some outstanding conversation excerpts:

Excerpt: Drafted template letter using the People's Law style

USER
Looking for a letter for employee to employer to put two week notice in.

BEAGLE+:
Absolutely, writing a resignation letter is an important step when you decide to leave your job. Here's a simple template you can use to draft your two weeks' notice letter. Remember to customize it to fit your situation:

[Your Name]
[Your Address]...

Excerpt: Good at math

USER:
I get 640 per week. And then I have part-time which 530. How to calculate

BEAGLE+:
Alright, let's break down how to calculate your Employment Insurance (EI) benefits when you're also earning money from a part-time job...

...1. For every dollar you earn from your part-time job, 50 cents are deducted from your EI benefits. So,
with your part-time earnings of $530, the deduction would be: $530 * 0.50 = $265.

2. Subtract the deduction from your original EI benefits to find out what your adjusted EI benefits would be: $640 - $265 = $375...

Excerpt: Pinpoint link to a webinar recording

BEAGLE+:
You might find the discussion on this topic in the "Making a Will in BC Town Hall 2022" (Recorded Webinar) helpful. At the timestamp 54:45, there's specific advice on making a separate will for property in other countries.

Excerpt: Brilliant analogies

USER:
grant of administration without will annexed

BEAGLE+:
When someone passes away without a will, it's a bit like leaving a puzzle without the picture on the box. You know there's a way to put everything together, but it's not clear right away. This is where a grant of administration without will annexed comes into play. It's a legal way to help sort everything out. Let's break this down step by step...

Excerpt: Empathetic response

BEAGLE+:
Before you go, I just want to remind you to take care of yourself during this process—it can be a lot to handle, especially with other commitments in your life. Remember to take things one step at a time. If there's anything else you need help with when you return, feel free to reach out.

USER:
What a "KIND & THOUGHTFUL SOUL" you are ! We need more humans to behave like YOU !

Try it yourself!

Try it now! Go to the People's Law School website, or try it on Facebook Messenger.

How can I build a chatbot with my proprietary data?

To build a chatbot with proprietary or private data, we use an approach called "Retrieval Augmented Generation". You can Google it, but I'm going to put it into super-simple terms here:

  1. We take your private data, turn it into shapes, and put it in a shape database.

  2. When a chatbot user asks a question, we turn that question into a shape. Then we ask our shape database, "Do we have any shapes that look like this?"

  3. From our shape database, we take the most similar shapes and the content that was used to create each shape. We send that content to GPT-4, and say, "Answer the user's question using this content."

Come to my free webinar

I'd love to show you all this in more detail and answer your questions. Come to my webinar: "How We Built a Scary-Good Legal Chatbot for British Columbia".