# Marcus Delgado, Managing Partner at Delgado & Reyes LLP — read of LawFirm AI, May 15 2026

> 14 years litigating commercial disputes in the Pacific Northwest, currently running an 18-attorney shop with two paralegals and a billing admin who I'm pretty sure keeps the whole thing together. We do commercial, IP-adjacent, and some employment defense. I coach my 9-year-old's soccer team on Saturdays, which means I take Friday afternoon calls from clients who want to relitigate their entire case strategy while I'm setting up cones.

## How I got here

I searched "AI opposing counsel research tool" about three weeks ago after losing a summary judgment motion where I found out -- too late -- that their lead attorney almost never loses those at this court. I've been burned by that before and I wanted to know if something actually tracked that stuff. This came up on page two of results. I bookmarked it, ignored it, then came back tonight after dinner.

## What I clicked first

The opposing counsel angle is the only reason I'm still on this page. "Playbook analysis. Win rates by case type. Deposition patterns. What they do when losing." That's a real need. Nobody sells that specifically. Every other legal AI tool I've looked at is glorified document summarization with a nicer interface. If that section is real, I'd at least get on a call.

The hero line "Stop Losing Cases and Clients to Incomplete Intelligence" is fine. Not memorable, but it's pointing at a real thing. "Incomplete intelligence" is a phrase I'd actually use internally.

## Where I paused

The data privacy section. They say "Your case files stay on your servers. LawFirm AI accesses metadata and document structure only, never the full text, unless you explicitly opt into our learning program." That's doing a lot of work in one sentence. What counts as "document structure"? Does that include party names, dates, filing numbers? Because that's enough to reconstruct a case. I have a state bar ethics obligation here and I need a real answer, not a landing page sentence. The "opt into our learning program" part made me sit back in my chair.

## What I distrusted

The case study. "Mid-Atlantic IP Shop: 45% Faster Discovery, 12% Higher Win Rate." No firm name. No attorney name. Win rate went from 58% to 70% on motions to dismiss in one month? I try motions to dismiss across 20 cases a year and I have data going back a decade. A 12-point swing in one month is not a thing. That's not how win rates move. Either this is cherry-picked, it's projecting from a very small sample, or it isn't real. And then they say, right there on the same page: "we don't have live customers on this idea yet." So where did those numbers come from?

Also: "built on SOC 2 Type II audit-ready practices." Audit-ready is not audited. That phrase is specifically chosen to sound like compliance without actually claiming it.

## What would convince me

A named firm with a contact I could call. Or a recording of their managing partner talking through what changed. Not a one-pager. One real attorney at a real firm saying "here's what happened to our discovery hours and here's how I handled bar ethics sign-off." That's it. I don't need a whitepaper. I need someone like me who already went through the vetting process and came out the other side comfortable with it.

On the opposing counsel profiles specifically: I want to see an actual sample output for a real attorney I'd recognize (opposing counsel in a published case, somebody who's public record). Show me what the profile actually looks like. That feature is either the most useful thing in legal tech I've seen in five years or it's a demo that falls apart under scrutiny.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The case study says 12% higher win rate in one month, but the page also says you have no live customers yet. Can you explain what that data is based on?

2. On ethics compliance: which state bar opinions have you reviewed around the document access model, and do you have outside counsel sign-off you can share, or at minimum the specific ABA formal opinions your team relied on?

3. The opposing counsel profiles -- are those built from public court records, PACER, or something else? What's the source, and how do you handle attorneys who are only active in state courts with limited public filing data?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The opposing counsel intelligence angle is genuinely differentiated and I've wanted something like it for years. But the case study numbers are impossible to trust given the "no live customers" disclosure sitting three inches below them, and the ethics/data question is a real blocker that a landing page sentence can't answer. I wouldn't delete the email if they reached out.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-15. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*