Lawyers, It’s Time to Go “All In” on AI - Yes I said It!

The best lawyers, whether in-house or outside counsel, drive business value by developing risk mitigation strategies to help businesses achieve their goals. Advances in artificial intelligence (“AI”) present opportunities for lawyers to drive even greater value by reducing legal fees, increasing efficiency, and improving client service. Allow me to share how below.

Leveraging AI to Reduce Legal Fees

Time is money. Literally. Whether it’s an outside counsel operating under a direct billed, pro rata hourly or project basis, or internal counsel, operating as part of a cost center – the cost of lawyers is tangible. The most judicious lawyers aim to operate efficiently, seeking to decrease costs and increase value.?

AI tools can be leveraged to automate or expedite various administrative tasks, especially those that are time-sensitive or repetitive. For example, scheduling meetings with participants in different time zones or with different working modalities. Or compiling and organizing a substantial amount of information.

AI tools can also be used to identify, aggregate, synthesize, and organize information, readying it for manual, human review.

Finally, productivity software is increasingly integrated with AI features. Automation of repeat work streams drives productivity and streamlines human touch points, allowing manual interaction with data to be more focused, efficient, and impactful.?

Without any doubt, AI tools can be used to drive value and reduce legal fees.

Leveraging AI to Increase Efficiency

AI can support efficiency in large research projects that require evaluating a lot of information. For example, if tasked to develop a compliance strategy for a new regulation, AI? can be used to summarize (i) compliance requirements across numerous bills, (ii) perspectives on compliance strategies, and (iii) benchmarking data. Similarly, AI can help summarize, compare, and contrast case law on specific issues.

AI can also be used to streamline the writing process. Writing the first sentence, or succinctly framing the issue can be the most challenging aspect of a writing project. Leveraging AI as a starting point can boost productivity. AI is useful for developing standard templates, which themselves can be used to scale repeat work streams.?

Of course, all artificially generated output can – and indeed should – be reviewed by humans and modified as needed to best suit the needs of the firm or client.

Efficiency gains throughout the legal review and analysis process allow lawyers to focus on designing risk mitigation strategies and driving value.

Nevertheless, legal professionals must always consider confidentiality and privilege when inputting information into an AI tool. It is important to understand how information entered into an AI tool may be accessed, used, and stored by the tool’s owner. Confidential and privileged information should never be input into an AI tool subject to terms that will erode downstream claims of confidentiality or privilege.

Leveraging AI to Improve Client Service

When delivering results to a client, whether the client is another lawyer, a product design lead, an investor, a salesperson, or a C-Suite executive, it is important to deliver the information with the appropriate amount of detail and in an appropriate tone. This means that delivering the same information to different audiences may require separate communications. Framing communications and tailoring them for the intended audience, is a nuanced but important aspect of effective lawyering.

AI tools can help summarize information in different ways for different audiences, allowing lawyers to take a single document (which itself may be written with AI assistance), and seamlessly repackage it for different audiences.

While AI can be a powerful tool in “supporting lawyers” to operate more effectively and efficiently, it has limitations. The risks and limitations of any AI tool should always be understood before use. And lawyers must remain vigilant in respecting sensitivities around confidentiality and privilege when using AI tools.?

Importantly,? AI is not a replacement for human review. The lawyer is ultimately responsible for the work product and AI should be used with that in mind.

Conclusion

All lawyers should seek ways to integrate AI into their practice. Many lawyers are already benefiting from AI in some measure. That number will likely increase as AI technology advances and AI tools improve to target specific use cases.

The key is leveraging AI – as one would with other software or tools –? not leading with it. As AI tools are still in their infancy, ongoing analysis of new AI tools and applications is required to optimize your use of them to enhance your practice.