Advancements in technology are ever-growing and sectors such as the legal industry are embracing the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI). In-house counsel faces inevitable waves of such technological changes in the coming few years. The year 2023 represented a significant shift in the acceptance and use of generative AI among legal professionals. A mid-year report by Bloomberg Law indicatively showed that 60% of attorneys had resorted to using generative AI, with in-house legal teams reporting much more drastic AI-related changes within their organisations than law firms.
Legal departments are now faced with the task of identifying high-volume, routine tasks that these AI tools can enhance and improve. Questions about the integration of AI into workflows, technical considerations during implementation, risks awareness, requisite training for their teams among others need to be answered before choosing to adopt AI in their operations.
Legal departments need first to understand the problems they are aiming to solve and the specific use cases they wish to undertake. Often, many organizations hastily adopt new tools to demonstrate its use rather than considering the practical application of the tool based on the use case. This prioritisation can come at the detriment of the effectiveness of technological transition. The legal operations team is most often tasked with answering these questions.
Some of the most promising cases for generative AI include automation of contracting processes, ticketing and question answering services, memo drafting and knowledge management. Each use case should be designed with a specific need or gap in mind that the AI tool is expected to fill. Comprehensive assessment exercises need to be conducted, to start with, in order to identify the best use cases. The assessments should look into business strategy alignment, resource allocation and the existing use of technology.
The use of generative AI in legal departments comes with a set of risks, predominantly related to the reliability, functionality, AI bias and privacy. As these technological tools are still largely unproven, it is difficult to anticipate the long-term effects and inherent risks. Legal departments need to consider the bias, explainability and transparency of automated decisions made by AI, its ethical usage and the associated oversight and controls. Generative AI’s influence on legal operations is dynamic and will undergo quick changes. Therefore, a thorough use case assessment and attention to bias and privacy issues will be critical in successfully adopting generative AI in legal departments.
The information in this article has been contributed by Meredith Brown and Brandon Lee – consultants at FTI Technology focusing on legal technology and discovery services. Consult their profiles here and here.