The recent rise in interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has ignited a new wave of speculation about its capabilities. However, Karl Harris, CEO of the legal analytics firm Lex Machina, approaches the field with both enthusiasm and pragmatism, gauging success by the immediate impact of AI rather than lofty future promises.
According to Harris, Lex Machina aims to stay rooted in current technological reality, a strategy designed not only to harness the power of AI but to apply it in innovative ways to solve prevalent issues in legal practices. Instead of getting caught in the overblown hype surrounding AI’s potential, his company focuses on the intersection of public expectations and actual AI capabilities.
AI, or more specifically machine learning, has been a cornerstone of Lex Machina’s services since its establishment at Stanford University’s law school. The company pioneered Legal Analytics, utilizing machine learning to process data from various legal sources. This analysis is used by lawyers to refine their arguments, offer informed advice to clients, establish competitive pitches for new business, and gain leverage in the courtroom and the boardroom.
The challenge of harnessing AI lies in constructing reliable and meaningful output from a diverse range of input data, states Harris. This requires ensuring that the AI model is trained on the most accurate dataset possible. Moreover, any data output produced by the model must be validated for authenticity and accuracy. Lex Machina supports this validation process by maintaining a team of legally trained analysts for human review.
Harris also distinguishes between the use of AI for specialization and augmentation. Specialization involves training a specific AI model on a particular topic, like caselaw or medical journals. Augmentation, on the other hand, is when you interact with the existing model and augment it with another data source to verify whether it’s factually correct. It’s a way of adding another layer of verification to AI output.
Beyond efficiency gains, Harris sees generative AI as enabling tasks that might otherwise be logistically impossible or too expensive. For instance, AI could draft a response to a legal motion that mimics the style of a particular opposing counsel, giving lawyers a chance to anticipate the next moves in litigation.
While Harris notes that technology providers like Nvidia that power AI will succeed, he also highlights the importance of unique content in the world of AI. Companies that have access to exclusive data or unique perspectives, like Lex Machina and LexisNexis, can leverage these resources to design and deploy AI in ways that others can’t.
Finally, Harris believes that companies who focus on their core competencies and successfully leverage generative AI to enhance them will also succeed in this AI-dominant world. This includes law firms. In his words, “I firmly believe that although generative AI won’t replace lawyers, lawyers who use generative AI will eventually replace those who don’t.”
The original report contains the full interview with Karl Harris.