AI Tool Hallie Simplifies Divorce, Reduces Costs & Stress
Since its inception in 2018, Hello Divorce has striven to demystify and de-stress the often-arduous process of dissolving a marriage. The startup specializes in guiding individuals through complex legal forms and the labyrinthine procedures that vary significantly across states and even counties. Now, the company has introduced Hallie, an AI-powered assistant accessible to anyone with a free account, offering vetted information on divorce laws and procedures.
Hello Divorce already provides practical tools such as financial calculators to help users understand real estate implications and state-specific child support guidelines. It also facilitates connections with a network of vetted professionals, including lawyers, mediators, real estate experts, and even life coaches, for those requiring more personalized guidance. Cofounder and CEO Erin Levine describes the service as a “holistic option that supports you through the entire experience” of divorce and its far-reaching consequences, in ways the traditional legal system often fails.
Levine, a divorce attorney for two decades, frankly assesses the current legal landscape, stating, “the divorce legal system is absolutely broken.” She points out that, on average, it costs $20,000 per litigant in legal fees alone, typically takes over a year to resolve, and frequently neglects the broader life transitions associated with divorce. To counteract these systemic shortcomings, Hello Divorce, alongside its tailored paid plans, offers free account holders access to thousands of articles, videos, and other meticulously curated resources. This extensive knowledge base acknowledges the reality that many individuals spend months or even years contemplating divorce before taking concrete legal action.
Heather Mackenzie, cofounder and president of Hello Divorce, explains that a key objective was to build a reliable knowledge base that stands apart from other online sources. She notes that many legal websites either employ aggressive advertising tactics or provide only vague, generic information. While numerous venture-backed companies are rushing to integrate AI, Mackenzie emphasizes that Hello Divorce adopted a deliberate approach to ensure its system met rigorous standards for accuracy and relevance. She explicitly rejected the idea of “a rich blend of all of the mediocre to not great, scary content on the internet, all mixed together and fed to our consumers.” Instead, the company leveraged its existing repository of “thousands and thousands and thousands of researched and vetted articles that we have produced over the years that we constantly update on our own.”
The integration of AI in legal information services is gaining traction, with companies like Rocket Lawyer deploying AI-powered contract review and tax services such as TurboTax and H&R Block introducing AI assistants. However, the emerging field has not been without its pitfalls; some AI tools designed for legal professionals have already been found to disseminate misinformation. To mitigate such risks, Hello Divorce partnered with Personal AI, a company that specializes in secure, customized models built upon trusted data, which they term personal language models (PLMs).
Suman Kanuganti, cofounder and CEO of Personal AI, elaborates on their approach: “PLM is designed to be highly personal, highly specialized, highly contextual to a specific set of data that is internal to a business or an individual.” His team collaborated with Hello Divorce for months to ensure Hallie could provide accurate answers down to the county level, covering a spectrum of topics from legal terminology to community property laws. Currently, Hallie can offer insights to users in all 50 states, consistently maintaining the clear, non-legalistic tone preferred by Hello Divorce.
According to Mackenzie, internal tests pitting Hallie against general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT have demonstrated Hallie’s superior, more personalized responses. The system is also designed for swift updates as laws evolve, and the company is considering rolling out an AI copilot to provide more in-depth guidance for paying users navigating complex cases. Approximately 6,000 real users have already participated in Hallie’s beta testing, with founders reporting that the tool has helped individuals avoid panic regarding divorce procedures, sometimes in the middle of the night when legal professionals are unavailable. In one instance, Hallie clarified for a user that their spouse was not seeking sole custody of their children. Other users have consulted the AI on diverse issues, from financial disclosure rules to the complexities of divorcing while pregnant.
Despite its advanced capabilities, Mackenzie underscores that Hallie operates under human oversight. “I actually think that this is an editor job,” she states, emphasizing the human role in curating the right content and tone, and instructing the chat interface on what information to highlight or de-emphasize.