this post was submitted on 02 May 2025

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203

Don’t watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits - Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 days ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] dzso@lemmy.world 82 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My first reaction was "who give a fuck?" then I got to the part of the article that says:

His website, which also features the purple dragon and a bunch of busted links in the footer, says that the firm "integrates AI to lower the cost of legal services."

Which is honestly a thousand times more concerning than how he chooses to display his silly logo. Dude is writing legal documents with AI. At least his lack of professionalism is obvious.

[+] angelmountain@feddit.nl -31 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Pretty sure all law firms do that nowadays. And they are quite stupid if they don't. As long as they check the output...

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would imagine they'd be stupid if they did use AI. I've seen people use AI to "write" technical documentation that I have had to review. That shit goes straight into the bin because the time I spend fixing all the AI nonsense is about the same amount of time it would take for me to write the document myself. It's gotten to a point where I straight up reject all AI generated documentation because I know fixing them is a waste of time.

I imagine legal documents have to be at least as precise as technical documents, so if they're checking the output I seriously doubt they're saving any time or money by using AI.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 days ago

And anytime I see anyone advocating this crap it's always because it gets the job done "faster", and like, the rule is: "fast; cheap; good; pick two", and this doesn't break that rule.

Yeah, they get it done super fast, and super shitty. I'm yet to see anyone explain how an LLM gets the job done better, not even the most rabid apologists.

LLMs have zero fidelity, and information without fidelity is just noise. It is not good at doing information work. In fact, I don't see how you get information with fidelity without a person in the loop, like on a fundamental, philosophical level I don't think it's possible. Fidelity requires truth, which requires meaning, and I don't think you get a machine that understands meaning without AGI.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 18 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Then why don't I just get the AI to write my legal filings and skip the lawyer fees?

The whole reason that I would retain professional help rather than just use an AI system is because the AI system makes stuff up, if the professional is just going to use the AI then what's the point?

The problem with all of these types is they always say "oh well as long as you check its work it's okay", aka vibe<insert previously intellectually demanding task here>. The problem with that is firstly if you have to check its work then you're basically just replacing one boring task with a different boring task, but you haven't actually saved any time, and the second problem is a lot of the time people don't actually check its work thoroughly, so mistakes still get through. Which is why using AI in a professional sense is a problem.

It's fine to use it for summarising the minutes of a meeting, but it just isn't good enough and reliable enough yet to be used in high-stakes situations. It is utterly irresponsible therefore to attempt to use it like that.

[–] Repelle@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is exactly the problem I have with programming tasks. It takes as long to check the code for problems (of which there are always many) as it would to write it and the code isn’t as good as mine anyway, and not infrequently just wholesale wrong.

For things like translating between languages it’s usually close, but still takes just as long to check as it would to do by hand.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Translating a code base between languages has always been a super easy, quick, fun experience for me. It's like a simple exercise with clear right & wrong answers, a nice break from most coding tasks. Whenever I've done it I've felt like, "oh god, here goes the next week", and then it's done in a couple of hours max and nothing was stressful, and I feel great.

Sorry, machines can't have that job. I do it better anyway.

[–] dzso@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

Pretty sure I'm not gonna hire you to do any professional work for me.

[–] anachrohack@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

They were copy pasting most of the boilerplate before

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 8 points 2 days ago

It's either a logo on the legal documents, or the lawyers come to court in dragon fursuits. No compromises. 😤

[–] wildtamaskan@pawb.social 82 points 3 days ago (1 children)

10 years ago I would've agreed that this kind of watermark was inappropriate. But seeing how much of our federal legal system has become a joke, up to and including the Supreme Court, decorum isn't high on my priority list anymore

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago

Agreed, the US Supreme Court is entirely responsible if they receive more ridicule than respect these days.

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Honestly that big ass logo is distracting.
Regardless of the design, any logo set at that level of transparency, size and placement, is going to make the text hard to read.

[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

agreed this one is far better

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQcVdd0rNmSUtJvf62gSzKeQ3sYNA5B7Is5SA&s=

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 2 days ago

do watermark your legal pdfs with purple dragons in suits

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

How else am I supposed to waste color toner so I can overbill my clients?

[–] tal@lemmy.today 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

"Each page of plaintiff’s complaint appears on an e-filing which is dominated by a large multi-colored cartoon dragon dressed in a suit," he wrote on April 28 (PDF). "Use of this dragon cartoon logo is not only distracting, it is juvenile and impertinent. The Court is not a cartoon."

The Court is not a cartoon.

They're portraying themselves as a scalie, not you.

That being said, why is anyone involved here watermarking PDF with anything? I mean, normally the purpose of a watermark is to link content with the creator. But I seriously doubt that the text and the background image have been merged into some kind of raster image.

investigates

Yeah, they link to the original dragonized PDF.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.miwd.114988/gov.uscourts.miwd.114988.1.0.pdf

It's just text on top of the image. You can copy-paste the text:

DRAGON LAWYERS PC
Jacob A. Perrone (P71915)
Attorneys for Plaintiff
325 East Grand River Ave., Suite 250
East Lansing, MI 48823
Phone: (844) JAKELAW
jacob.perrone@yahoo.com

It's like having a screensaver on an LCD monitor.

And pdftotext, in poppler-utils, looks like it makes a pretty decent de-watermarked text file of it too.

[–] Bezier@suppo.fi 21 points 3 days ago

It's like having a screensaver on an LCD monitor.

But screensavers are fun!

[–] Incogni@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The Court is not a cartoon.

They're portraying themselves as a scalie, not you.

I think they meant this like "This court is not a cartoon, so keep your cartoon character out of it" - cartoon as in the medium, not the character.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

Fine, I'll wear my fursuit for the trial instead then

[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago

It's not about anyone being a scalie, it's a cross between "I'm supposed to be reading the text here, take this seriously" and "modernity means we don't use powdered wigs anymore"

[–] Glitchvid@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

I gotta admit this got a chuckle out of me, I'd allow it.

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I’m genuinely surprised that corporations haven’t started sponsoring defendants through watermarking their company logos on legal briefings.

[–] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Motion for summary dismissal, brought to you by Mountain Dew

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 points 2 days ago

This jury packed with EXTREME FLAVOR courtesy of Doritos new Late Nite Taco!

[–] terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Thx, they will now...

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Your honor, before we get to the proceedings, I would like to take a moment and thank our sponsor SQUARESPACE!

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

So certain lawsuits won't be possible anymore because advertisers don't like to be associated with that kind of content?

[–] pulido@lemmings.world 3 points 2 days ago

I honestly think it's pretty funny.

I like these guys.

[–] Kaelygon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

phew, I dodged this one. My logo is just a purple dragon with no suit

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

I would not mind if they toned it down to what other people do for a watermark. As in: if you really look for it, it is noticeable, but it does not obstruct actual contents, or makes it harder to read.

And if they don't want it to be copied or scanned, just drop in a few Eurions.

[–] HyperfocusSurfer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago

Is it just me, or it kinda sounds like they don't want to prococess a complaint? A warning not to do that again would be enough, IMO, given it seems like there are no rules prohibiting this.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu -1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Please keep your weird stuff private, furries/scalies.

[–] stephen01king@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

While I do agree with the sentiment, I don't agree that this qualifies as weird.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

If you think that is weird, you must be celibate or something, lol.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

If you don't think it's weird to draw funny cartoon animals all over official documents, and somewhat attempt to guess people's marital status out of nowhere when they do, you might be a bit weird.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Celebacy has nothing to do with marital status, lol. You can marry and never fuck.

Calling someone weird because of something harmless simply because it isn't the norm, now that's weird.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It is weird given the context