A small Florida law firm is investing in artificial intelligence and plans to make medical cannabis applications more financially feasible for marginalized communities and low-income applicants through its use.
Mr. Cannabis Law announced its US$100,000 investment in AI on Monday for automating medical cannabis license applications and cannabis real estate deals among other things. The firm has allocated that amount for the time and resources involved with testing various AI technologies and their different functions to determine which ones suit its specific needs.
“We’re taking some of the current AI that’s out there and trying to build our own datasets so that we can have a specialized AI and machine learning platform applicable to cannabis and psychedelics,” said the firm’s Founding Partner Dustin Robinson in an interview with Mugglehead.
Dustin Robinson. Photo via Mr. Cannabis Law
According to Mr. Cannabis Law, the average cost of a medical cannabis license application in competitive states like Florida is somewhere around US$350,000. The firm has a goal to use AI to get that number down tenfold to around US$35,000 so that applications are more financially feasible for those with limited resources.
Mr. Cannabis Law will be carefully reviewing and editing any work completed by AI, which will ideally become a less time-consuming process as the technology evolves. “I think it’s really, really important for law firms right now to do significant review of AI since it’s such an early technology,” said Robinson.
Read more: Scaling AI is the top priority for 78% of information executives: MIT Technology Review Insights
Read more: RISE Dispensaries initiates ‘Thanks, Dick’ campaign to facetiously celebrate Richard Nixon
Law firm AI usage becoming common practice
Currently, the firm is focused on developing its own AI and machine learning platform to suit its needs, but Robinson says once that has been accomplished other firms may be able to utilize it.
“I do have a long-term vision that if we’re able to build a unique platform that would be useful to other law firms it could potentially grow into something that we would offer them to streamline their activity,” said Robinson.
Mr. Cannabis Law has two offices and five attorneys and is currently practicing in Florida, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Robinson recently spoke about psychedelics at the Psychedelic Series Panel in Nashville, Tennessee and discussed investing in the industry at Miami’s Benzinga Psychedelics Capital Conference in April.
“Ultimately, I believe law firms that don’t embrace AI will be left behind,” he added.
Other cannabis and psychedelics law firms in the U.S. include Husch Blackwell LLP, the Plant Medicine Law Group and Phillips Lytle LLP, which opened its Psychedelic & Mental Health Therapies Practice in New York last summer.
The news comes as many start-up companies involved with AI are receiving vast sums of money from investors. These include Spellbook (formerly Rally), which recently secured an investment of US$10.9 million from Moxxie Ventures, Thomson Reuters Ventures and other developers of AI technologies that enable lawyers to draft and review legal contracts faster.
rowan@mugglehead.com
