Meet Gila Hayat, CTO at Darrow: A Y-Combinator That Uses AI to Map the Web for Legal Violations

Darrow was born from the idea of ​​meeting the future and creating the world’s leading platform for justice information. Every day, millions of people around the world are harmed by violations of the law that go completely unnoticed.

Air pollution, data breaches — these events happen all the time, and there are traces of these breaches online — but finding them in the ocean of data, let alone building a lawsuit around them, is almost impossible. Darrow turns the law into machine-readable rules to identify harmful acts, then piece together the legal history by connecting the dots from information scattered across multiple sources. We then bring this data to law firms as intelligence so they can protect the rights of victims of these violations.

The social idea behind Darrow is to bring justice through data and create a platform that pulls the whole story together. This includes the evidentiary, financial and legal aspects that allow us to scale and identify human rights.

That’s what we do, and perhaps a clue to the promise that Darrow is. But I think the real magic is in who we are as people. I feel privileged to work with every Darrower who has joined our tribe. They are all highly motivated professionals who have strapped themselves in for a crazy ride and are committed to using their unique skills to bring us closer to our vision of a better justice system.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

The company started with three founders: Evyatar Ben Artzi, Elad Spiegelman and myself. Evya and Elad worked for the Supreme Court of Israel and I served in the Intelligence Unit of the IDF for over 7 years. When I first met her, we talked for hours. Their discouragement was easy to see because, despite all their years of law school, they learned that trying to make a positive impact on such a tradition-based system was incredibly frustrating.

The reason we built Darrow the way we did was based on a shared understanding that the legal research process, or identifying new cases, was fundamentally an information-gathering problem. So, the combination of the three of us as legal and technology experts allowed us to identify the patterns that lead to infringement, and to do so at scale.

We also wanted to establish a corporate culture that reflected Darrow’s vision. We have anchored important values ​​in our foundation. One of them is that people always come first. Darrow is people-centric, so we prioritize the well-being of people above all else, be it that of our colleagues or our customers. Absolute openness is also a must, we communicate openly and honestly, even if it’s uncomfortable. We also firmly believe that there are no real limitations on what we can do.

With a vision and purpose like Darrow’s, you must have faith that absolutely anything is possible. We encourage self-expression, creativity, ingenuity and always striving for the truth. We wanted to create a space where each individual can reach their full potential, both personally and professionally.

How has the company developed lately and what milestones have you reached?

We have grown significantly, from three founders to around 85 employees and a branch in New York. We work with world-class law firms in the United States to help victims of wrongdoing get the compensation they deserve.

We learned how to scale our platform; Both in terms of human capital and the technology behind it. This allowed us to detect new breaches and enrich more cases by teaching our engine how to identify these malicious events using new data points that complete the big picture.

Our biggest milestones happen every time we generate a case that is then taken to court. The thrill of these moments never lets up and is celebrated by the whole Darrow tribe.

What can we expect from Darrow in the future?

Darrow will be the gold standard for how cases are assessed and scored before the justice system. Unfortunately, violations will likely never stop. As the market continues to change, it becomes even more difficult for the justice system to keep up. What we need to do, which Darrow hopes to do, is restore trust in the judicial community.

So that justice is no longer driven by feelings, but is driven by data. So that everyone knows the price of injustice and that violators are held accountable, but also given an incentive to do what is right. A world where we feel protected as a society. Our main idea is smooth justice: to enable people to get back what was somewhat hidden from them.

The law applies to everyone and governs every aspect of our lives. In my opinion, it’s safe to say that our justice system and our morality as a society in general are long overdue for an upgrade, don’t you think?