# Marcus Trevino, Director of Litigation Operations at Salazar Guerrero LLP — read of LawFirm AI, June 16 2026

> 11 years in legal, 8 running ops for a 14-attorney plaintiff-side PI firm in San Jose. We're on Clio, Westlaw, and a prayer that new associates read the style guide.

## How I got here

Tuesday commute, Caltrain. I searched "AI motion drafting small law firm" after a partner spent 45 minutes picking apart a first-pass MSJ that a second-year had put three days into. Came up around result five. Didn't look sponsored so I clicked. Kept the tab open through four stops and read it at lunch.

## What I clicked first

This line pulled me in: "Partners review those drafts knowing 70% of the analysis will need rework." I don't know where that number came from but whoever wrote it has been inside a litigation firm. I have partners who say almost exactly that. It got me reading.

What pushed me back immediately: the hero above the fold is "Solo lawyers, stop losing prospects to the night shift." That's solo attorney messaging. Then further down the same page: "Who this is NOT for: Solo practitioners with under 10 inquiries per month." So the splash headline is pitching to the person you're telling not to buy. That's either careless or the page has two different products fighting for the same real estate.

## Where I paused

The FAQ. Specifically: "Can I trust the AI output? No." That's the first honest sentence I've read on an AI legal product page this year. Then: "We flag uncertain sections in red so nothing slips through." That's not just a disclaimer, that's a UX choice that shows someone thought about malpractice exposure before they thought about their conversion rate. It made me more interested, not less. The other vendors I've looked at say "outputs may require attorney review" in 8-point gray type at the bottom.

## What I distrusted

Two things, and one of them almost made me close the tab for good.

First: "75% Faster case review" and "60% Fewer revision rounds." Those are pull-quote stats with no attribution. Faster than what baseline? What firm size, what practice area, what courts? Their own workflow shows step 3 as "You refine in editor (20-30 min)." If I'm still spending 30 minutes refining, what does 75% faster actually mean in wall-clock terms per case?

Second, and this is the one: the page has a "Start Free Trial" button, a "$29 per case" price card, and a "$499/mo Firm Plan" with a two-week free trial. Then, on the same page, maybe three scrolls down: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet. We shipped the strategy package; you ship the customer conversations."

So which is it? Is this a live product I can trial today, or a startup blueprint I'm being sold? Because those are two completely different asks. If it's the first, great. If it's the second, the pricing table and trial button are misleading in a way that would make a partner at my firm end the call.

## What would convince me

One named law firm showing a before/after. Not a testimonial pull quote. An actual workflow breakdown: what practice area, how many docs uploaded, what the raw AI output looked like, what the partner's revision time dropped to. I don't need ten of them. One real one with a firm name and a managing partner willing to say their name.

And I want to see what "flagging uncertain sections in red" actually looks like in the editor. One sample output from a real motion draft, redacted fine, with the flags visible in context. The 8-minute processing claim and the 20-30 minute refinement claim become a lot more believable once I can see the interface doing what it says.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. You say "trained on 500k+ cases in those categories." What courts? Federal, state, which states, what years? We do California plaintiff-side PI work. If the training set is weighted toward federal commercial litigation from 2018, I need to know that before I trust the first-pass case law analysis.

2. What is the guardrail on citations? I have seen legal LLMs confidently hallucinate case names and docket numbers. Does the tool cross-reference against Westlaw or a live database, or is catching that the reviewing attorney's job?

3. Is there a live product I can actually run a file through today, or is the free trial button a landing page for a waitlist? No judgment on the answer, I just need to know which conversation I'm in.

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The pain framing is accurate and the "Can I trust the AI? No." line is legitimately refreshing after months of vendor decks. But I genuinely cannot tell whether I'm looking at a working product or a pitch deck with a buy button, and that confusion is doing more damage to the close than any missing feature would.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-16. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*