What is Crosby AI? An inside look at the agentic law firm

You know the feeling. Your sales team has a fantastic deal ready to close, the customer is eager to sign on the dotted line, and then… everything hits a brick wall. The reason? Legal review.

Contracts like MSAs and DPAs get stuck in a seemingly endless back-and-forth that can drag on for weeks. It kills momentum, frustrates everyone involved, and slows down revenue. For any company trying to move fast, it’s a huge bottleneck.

A new wave of AI-powered solutions is popping up to solve this exact problem.

One of the most interesting new players is Crosby AI, a startup with some serious backing from firms like Sequoia. But they aren’t just selling another piece of software. They have a unique "hybrid" model, calling themselves an "agentic law firm."

So, what does that actually mean? Let’s break down what Crosby AI is, how it really works, the pros and cons of their approach, and how this service model stacks up against the wider world of AI for business operations.

What is Crosby AI?

Here’s the main thing to understand: Crosby AI isn’t a tool you buy, it’s a tech-powered law firm you hire. It uses its own AI agents alongside a team of in-house lawyers to review and negotiate commercial contracts for you.

The company was started by a team that gets both sides of the equation. CEO Ryan Daniels is a lawyer who spent time at Cooley, while CTO John Sarihan was an early engineer at Ramp. That combination of legal and tech DNA is the bedrock of their whole model.

They are laser-focused on one thing: the high-volume sales contracts that always seem to clog up the pipeline, like Master Service Agreements (MSAs), Data Processing Agreements (DPAs), and Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). Their whole pitch, as they say, is about "deal velocity, not billable hours." The idea is to take a process that takes weeks and shrink it to under an hour.

That vision has definitely turned some heads. Crosby AI came out of the gate with a $5.8 million seed round led by Sequoia and Bain Capital Ventures, which shows just how much the market is craving a better way to handle routine legal work.

How the Crosby AI model works

Crosby’s approach is all about its end-to-end, human-in-the-loop process. This is what makes it so different from a standard software tool. You’re basically outsourcing the whole task, not just licensing the tech. Here’s a simple look at how it works.

1. You send Crosby AI the contract

The process is designed to be as simple as possible and fit right into how your team already works. You can send a contract or legal question straight to Crosby using tools you’re already in all day, like Slack, email, or even a CRM trigger. No one has to learn a new platform or log into a clunky portal.

2. The Crosby AI does the heavy lifting

Once a document is in their hands, Crosby’s AI agents get started. These agents are trained to do the initial, time-sucking parts of a contract review. They read the document, spot standard clauses, flag common red flags or risks, and put together a first draft of redlines. The AI uses market data and your company’s specific info to guide its suggestions, handling the grunt work that would normally take a human lawyer a few hours.

3. A human lawyer gives the final sign-off

This is the key step that makes the Crosby AI model what it is. Before you see anything, a real lawyer from Crosby’s own firm, Crosby Legal PLLC, reviews everything the AI has done.

This lawyer’s job is to apply human judgment, deal with any weird or complex clauses the AI might not get, and make sure the final version is 100% accurate and solid. This "human-in-the-loop" step provides a layer of accountability and real expertise that software alone can’t give you, which is pretty important when you’re dealing with legal agreements.

The pros and cons of Crosby AI

This service-based model has some obvious upsides, but it also comes with a few trade-offs you should know about.

The good stuff about Crosby AI

• Speed: This is the big one. Slashing a multi-week review process down to an hour has a direct impact on how fast you can close deals and bring in revenue. One of their customers even said they sped up redlines by 80%.

• Expertise when you need it: You get access to solid legal advice without having to hire a full-time general counsel or pay the wild hourly rates of a big law firm. The human oversight acts as a crucial safety net.

• Predictable costs: Crosby uses a fixed-fee-per-document model. This is a huge relief compared to the unpredictable (and often painful) billable hour, giving you a clear picture of your legal spending.

The potential trade-offs

• It’s a "black box" service: You send a document in and get a finished product back. It’s quick and it works, but you have zero visibility or control over their internal process. You’re handing off the entire workflow, not giving your own team a better tool.

• It has a narrow focus: Crosby AI is built for a very specific set of commercial contracts. It’s not a replacement for general legal advice, and it can’t help with things like litigation, intellectual property, or other complex corporate legal matters.

• You can’t really customize it: Unlike a true software platform, you can’t build your own workflows, tweak the AI’s logic, or easily connect it to your company’s internal knowledge base. The "lawyers-in-the-loop" are their lawyers, not yours, which limits how much you can tailor it to your company’s unique needs.

Is the outsourced model right for all support?

The Crosby AI model is a really smart take on AI for specialized support. Legal review is a perfect example of a high-stakes area where having a human expert in the loop is an absolute must.

But what about other high-volume support areas? Think about customer service, internal IT helpdesks, or HR questions. For these functions, a fully outsourced "black box" service can be too much, too slow to adapt, and way too rigid. You don’t want to outsource your entire customer experience; you want to make your own team faster and better.

This is where a powerful, self-serve platform that puts you in the driver’s seat makes a lot more sense. For those kinds of jobs, a solution like eesel AI offers the flexibility and control you actually need.

Here’s a quick look at how the two models compare:

Feature	Crosby AI Model (Outsourced Service)	eesel AI Model (Self-Serve Platform)
Control	Low. You hand off a task and get a result.	High. You build, tweak, and manage your own AI assistants.
Setup	Onboarding process managed by their team.	Super simple. You can be live in minutes.
Integration	Connects to communication tools (Slack/Email).	Deep, one-click connections to your helpdesk and knowledge docs.
Customization	Limited to what their service offers.	Totally customizable prompts, actions, and automation rules.
Testing	You have to trust their process and expertise.	Powerful simulation lets you test on past tickets before going live.
Use Case	Niche legal contract review.	Broad customer service, IT, and internal support automation.

With a platform like eesel AI, you aren’t just handing off a task. You’re making your own team more powerful. You can connect all your existing knowledge, your help center, your Confluence site, your Google Docs, and even past tickets from Zendesk or Freshdesk, to build AI assistants that perfectly match your company’s voice and rules.

A look at eesel AI's customization options, a key difference from the Crosby AI model.

One of the biggest differences is the ability to test and roll things out slowly. Before your AI ever talks to a real customer, eesel AI lets you run it against thousands of your old tickets. You can see exactly how it would have answered, get solid predictions on resolution rates, and spot any gaps in your knowledge base. It takes all the risk out of the equation and gives you a level of confidence an outsourced service just can’t match.

The testing and simulation feature in eesel AI allows users to verify AI performance before deployment, a contrast to Crosby AI's black box approach.

Crosby AI pricing

Crosby AI’s website mentions "upfront pricing" and "fixed rates by the document," which is a big part of its appeal over the old billable hour model.

That said, the specific numbers are not public. To get a quote, you need to contact their sales team. This is pretty standard for service-based companies, but it makes it tough to quickly figure out if it’s a good fit for your budget.

This is a big difference from the clear, upfront pricing of a true software platform like eesel AI. You can see exactly what you get and what it costs right on the website.

Plan	Monthly (bill monthly)	Effective /mo Annual	Key Unlocks
Team	$299	$239	Train on website/docs; Copilot for help desk; Slack; reports.
Business	$799	$639	Everything in Team + train on past tickets; MS Teams; AI Actions; bulk simulation.
Custom	Contact Sales	Custom	Advanced actions; multi‑agent orchestration; custom integrations.

With eesel AI, the plans are based on your usage (how many AI interactions you have per month), with no surprise fees per ticket resolved. This gives you predictable costs that don’t go up just because you’re successfully automating more of your support.

Crosby AI: Choosing the right tool for the job

Crosby AI is tackling a very specific, high-stakes business problem with a clever and effective model. For fast-moving companies that are tired of getting bogged down by contract negotiations, their mix of AI and human lawyers is a great way to unblock sales teams and grow faster.

But it’s important to see this outsourced model for what it is: one way to use AI. For most of the day-to-day internal and external support challenges that businesses face, a different approach is usually more practical, scalable, and just plain better.

For teams that want to stay in control, customize their own workflows, and automate support across the tools they already use, eesel AI is the way to go. It gives you enterprise-grade AI power in a refreshingly simple, self-serve platform that you can mold to fit your business perfectly.

Ready to take control of your support automation? Try eesel AI for free and see how fast you can build an AI assistant trained on your own knowledge.