What is one way artificial intelligence (AI) will impact law firms and legal practices in the future?
To help you get an idea of where law firms and AI meet and how the trend will progress, we asked tech experts and lawyers this question for their best insider knowledge. From leveraging predictive analytics to reviewing legal precedent, there are several insights that may help you better understand the forecast of this industry pairing for the coming years.
Here are nine ways AI will affect the direction of legal practices:
Get Fast Legal Assistance
Leverage Predictive Analytics
Improve Task Efficiency
Save Time and Money
Minimize Courtroom Litigation
Save Time in Contract Reviews
Reduce Human Error
Review Legal Precedent
Boost Document Analysis and Research
Get Faster Legal Assistance
Artificial intelligence is being implemented across many industries, the legal sector included. For example, we use an AI receptionist on our website to help potential clients with any questions they may have. The use of AI in law firms extends to e-discovery, research, analytics, and document management — all of which have historically taken many hours to process. The implementation of AI in the legal profession can result in faster legal solutions for clients. Individual lawyers and large law firms alike can benefit from AI-based technologies.
Court Will, Will & Will
Leverage Predictive Analytics
Technology has expanded exponentially in the last two decades, with artificial intelligence permeating nearly every industry. The AI waters are being tested here, too — predictive analytics is currently being made available to some judges. This tech can assess given information and predict a probable outcome, or it can recognize missing data. Similarly, the concept of expertise automation makes legal knowledge more accessible. Ideally, instead of a meeting with a personal injury law firm like ours, expertise automation software will allow clients to ask questions like “Do I have a possible slip-and-fall lawsuit?” and receive a digestible answer. They can then make the educated decision whether they should file a suit. You might think that this takes away business, but it streamlines the process so that our attorneys are able to save themselves for more critical judgments.
Alison Pearson, Hal Waldman and Associates
Improve Task Efficiency
Possibly the biggest impact that AI will have on law firms in the future is it’ll make legal work more efficient and court appearances more effective. We’re already seeing AI take over many simple tasks for lawyers, which in turn has allowed them to focus on completing more complex tasks with improved accuracy and attention to detail. Some of these tasks include contract analysis, filling out documents, reviewing written work, and more. As more law firms adopt this type of technology, it’ll draw in more attention for improvement and will make the entire legal process much, much more streamlined and effective.
Seth Price, Price Benowitz LLP
Save Time and Money
AI and machine learning will change the way law firms handle billing and journals. AI is able to handle it a lot quicker than barristers — and more efficiently. Most legal practices are already implementing AI into their practices. It is cheaper, in the long run, to have AI handle these, as well.
Eric Gist, Awesome OS
Minimize Courtroom Litigation
AI is already being used to adjudicate in several jurisdictions around the world. In Estonia, for instance, so-called "robot judges" have been introduced in small claims courts to settle disputes of under 7,000 euros. Algorithms are already being used in sentencing decisions in the U.S., and lawyers will continue to use sophisticated AI to answer increasingly complex legal questions as well as pull, analyze and apply case law. All of this will amount to more technology-assisted analytical work and less courtroom litigation for lawyers.
Matt Spiegel, Lawmatics
Save Time in Contract Reviews
Contracts take a considerable amount of time to review, which is work that has traditionally been given to junior lawyers and paralegals. It entailed a lot of work for relatively low pay. Furthermore, new lawyers are liable to miss things that more seasoned lawyers would catch. Increasingly sophisticated AI, aided by machine and meta-learning, will be able to summarize and highlight anything out of the ordinary in a contract. This will save a tremendous amount of time for firms, as well as eliminate positions for junior lawyers who used to handle this admittedly much more tedious work. The AI that summarizes news articles is already impressive enough, and its applications to the legal industry are revolutionary.
Eric Rohrback, Hill & Ponton
Reduce Human Error
There's no room for error when it comes to reviewing legally binding documents, which is why the entire process of finalizing a contract is fairly lengthy. AI-powered contract review services offer a lot of promise in this regard since these systems not only help in eliminating errors that the human eye tends to miss out on, but also significantly speed up the entire process.
Riley Beam, Douglas R. Beam, P.A.
Review Legal Precedent
I believe that when AI improves the efficiency of legal administration, there will be more opportunities for lawyers. Disagreements will be resolved more rapidly by having machines examine legal precedents and the ever-growing body of statutory law. A computer will get you most of the way to a resolution; however, a well-informed human will be required to sense-check the machine's results, as well as to place the legal analysis into the context of human matters, whether business or personal.
Veronica Miller, VPNOverview
Boost Document Analysis and Research
Artificial intelligence has gained a lot of following ever since it was integrated into the mainstream market. AI has influenced science, and many other sectors, such as law firms, have introduced this advancement into their system. Legal practices through AI can help enhance the process of analyzing and reviewing documents. Finding the relevant document for your client’s case can be tiring through conventional means; analyzing records through AI can help save a lot of time. Researching can also become very efficient as AI enables you to get to the right point at the right time.
Olivia Tan, CocoFax
