5 Ways Law Firms Can Use AI to Improve Efficiency
It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (“AI”) is changing the way that many businesses work, and law firms are no exception. Between providing time-saving tools to improve marketing, legal research, and even writing, Artificial Intelligence can cut back on hours of work freeing up time to focus on working directly with clients, taking on more cases, and increasing revenue.
Overall, this can have a significant impact on a law firm’s productivity and client satisfaction, but in an industry that’s typically slow to adopt new technology, how long will it be until we see this kind of impact?
When you consider the shortcomings of artificial intelligence including potential ethical issues and concerns about the accuracy of information produced by these tools, it’s no surprise that many law firms may be hesitant to add AI to their tech arsenal.
This article explores a few of the ways that AI can change the way we practice law and help us create a better client experience while also addressing the challenges that the software poses at this point.
Benefits of AI for Law Firms
“Artificial intelligence is changing the way lawyers think, the way they do business and the way they interact with clients. Artificial intelligence is more than legal technology. It is the next great hope that will revolutionize the legal profession…What makes artificial intelligence stand out is the potential for a paradigm shift in how legal work is done” – ABA Journal
The benefits of using AI tools in the legal industry are endless. As service providers who traditionally have had no choice but to trade their time for money, lawyers have been limited in the number of hours they can work, the clients they can serve, and the revenue they can generate for as long as the profession has existed. In fact, according to a prediction by Goldman Sachs, the entire legal industry will either be complemented (56%) or replaced (44%) by AI.
With the help of artificial intelligence, lawyers and law firms can automate and outsource time-consuming tasks allowing them to make the most of their time. This ability benefits more than just the firm’s bottom line, it also helps lawyers free up some of their own time to focus on their health, reduce their stress levels, and spend more time with their family and friends. All of this contributes to their overall health and well-being allowing them to better serve their clients.
A few of the benefits of integrating AI into law firms include:
- Enhancing Efficiency and Productivity
- Improving Decision-Making
- Enhancing Client Service
5 Ways Law Firms are Using AI to Improve Efficiency
While the ways in which AI are used in law firms are bound to expand as the technology improves, there are five significant ways that law firms can improve their efficiency and save time with AI.
1. Legal Research
Legal research software powered by AI allows legal professionals to search through large databases of statutes, regulations, practice areas, case laws, jurisdictions, and other key information in a fraction of the time. While this has traditionally been a task that attorneys and legal professionals had to do manually taking hours and even days to find relevant information to support their client’s case, AI software allows comprehensive legal research to be conducted much more quickly which saves time for the lawyer and lowers the client’s bill.
2. Document Review
One of the most common uses of AI in the legal field is through document review or e-discovery. E-discovery is the process of scanning electronic information to find non-privileged information that is relevant to a case. Lawyers can use the software to search documents by dates, geographic location, search terms, and more to find the information they need in less time.
Aside from saving time and increasing productivity, it also helps the lawyer obtain more information than they may have if they read through each document. While lawyers are trained in reading comprehension allowing them to find key information quickly and efficiently, any person tasked with combing through a large volume of information runs the risk of overlooking important information. When a case has hundreds or even thousands of pages of information, lawyers can use AI to analyze the metadata of documents to find key pieces of information and to “deduplicate” repetitive documents which streamlines the lawyers’ review of documents and increases the lawyers’ ability to locate relevant pieces of evidence needed for their client’s case.
AI through E-discovery helps lawyers target their search for information to improve efficiency and accuracy. This is beneficial to the client because not only is their case stronger, but the process also saves time which minimizes their bill.
3. Contract Review
While AI cannot replace the expertise of a trained lawyer, it can help speed up the process of drafting and reviewing contracts. It does this by using machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, which is the process of using algorithms to train software to learn from data sets and perform specific tasks. By exposing AI software to a variety of contracts, it can learn to identify contract provisions, contract types, and terms. This can help the software quickly review contracts and flag sections that need to be reviewed, place similar provisions side by side for comparison, and provide drafting guidance.
All these tasks speed up the review process without automating it entirely. While these tools are more efficient than having an attorney review contracts manually, they do not replace the contract interpretation and other contract-related skills that attorneys are trained in.
4. Legal Writing
While handing off brief writing and other tasks to AI tools is not an option, there are ways to improve the speed and accuracy of legal writing with AI. Things like legal research, outlining a brief, analyzing data, and predicting case outcomes can all improve the legal writing process for attorneys. By saving time during the planning and research process, lawyers can speed up tasks to minimize client bills and time spent.
5. Predictive Analytics
After conducting legal research and analyzing their findings, lawyers predict the likelihood of success of their client’s cases to help inform their legal strategy. As is the case with due diligence, this can be time-consuming because of the large volume of information they have to sort through and analyze.
One of the biggest advantages of using AI tools is the ability to improve decision-making with the use of predictive analytics. AI tools gather vast amounts of data, analyze that data looking at patterns and trends, provide insights that can inform legal strategies, and in turn help to make better data-driven decisions, more accurately predict the outcome of cases, and improve the client experience.
Risks Associated with Using AI
As with anything new, especially something that’s still developing like AI, there are several challenges related to integrating AI into law firms.
- Inaccurate information: AI does not always return accurate information. Hallucinations is the term used for inaccurate information generated by ChatGPT and other AI tools. That became clear in June of 2023 when two lawyers were sanctioned by a federal judge in New York for using ChatGPT to write a legal brief that cited cases that did not exist.
- Ethical issues: There are several ethical considerations that lawyers and other legal professionals need to keep in mind when using AI tools. Concerns such as data privacy, confidentiality, bias, and other considerations should be considered before inputting data into AI tools and using research or writing drafted by the software.
- Copyright infringement and plagiarism: Using AI technology to draft documents, marketing materials, memos, and other written information can result in the tool taking content from another website word for word resulting in plagiarism and even intellectual property infringement.
- Duty of competence: Lawyers have a duty of competence in all areas of their practice including technology. As technology advances, including AI, lawyers must understand how artificial intelligence works, how to use it, and the potential risks and benefits of AI.
Lawyers need to remember that AI software can supplement their practice, but it cannot replace the work that they do for their clients. Legal professionals must be diligent about reviewing anything produced or analyzed by their AI tools to ensure that they are using accurate information while serving their clients.
Looking Ahead: Applications of AI in Our Practice at Rosen Hagood
Our top priority is providing exceptional service to our clients and helping them achieve the outcomes they deserve, so as technology evolves, we are watching and learning about these new tools while analyzing whether they make sense to integrate into our firm. We are always on the lookout for ways to evolve our practice without compromising the quality of our work, relationships with our clients, client data and information, and adhering to ethical standards.
To speak with our Charleston-based legal team, contact us today.
