# Mike legal AI

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Mike legal AI and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free open-source legal AI for general legal work; people say it falls short for full legal research. Critics say it's a thin wrapper around regular LLMs.

## What people warn about

- Thin wrapper around regular LLMs (3 comments): "this is just a wrapper around regular LLMs i.e. nothing that you couldn't achieve yourself with the right prompting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963184)) "flimsy wrapper around a model with a chat interface, a few prompts, and some very basic RAG" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963382)) "it's a complete nothing burger of what exists in the underlying code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47962184))
- Looks vibe coded, red flags (2 comments): "This is just a vibe coded project that escaped showlim." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963775)) "There's a lot of red flags here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963369))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Astra for Law](https://hackerapproved.com/p/astra-for-law.md): 11 recommend
- [Claude for Legal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-for-legal.md): 8 recommend
- [Harvey AI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/harvey.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Mike legal AI", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mike/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).