What areas do you see the most potential for generative AI in the legal industry, if at all?
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Running a legal practice is data based - so many areas. Due Diligence, Discovery, Research, Drafting, consistent cost estimates, debt recovery just to name a few!
AI can be used for cost savings initially in litigation document production which can be done in a controlled environment within a contained setting of defined parameters.
Producing documents in response to a specific set of parameters which often requires searching a large data set for specific terms.
The result should be controlled by paralegals or junior lawyers for privilege and sensitive information.
Repetitive low level tasks, or tasks that are based in data, organisational tasks, and so much more no doubt.
I believe CLM can significantly improve with the advent of Gen AI tools, especially around language learning models, automation on red lining and spotting differences and similarities substantively not just procedurally (eg on legal issues and evaluation of risk vs rewards in certain clauses such as mutual indemnification), and reviewing the same for errors, typos, version up or down, analogies to a company’s negotiated contracts historically, and capitalization of critical terms as well as smart comparisons with industry agreements or prior negotiated terms. For instance, GenAI applied in CLM management software could educated a legal team or business team internally about how that same company previously negotiated a certain clause and / or what its stance is or was, who this was done with, how long it took to finalize a specific provision, etc ultimately indicating cultural norms and increasing efficiency and / or ease of transactional processing.
eDiscovery, document summarization, research and drafting. Document summarization for any size firm and legal department will save a significant amount of time...summarizing contracts, deposition transcripts, hearing transcripts, medical records, police reports...the list goes on. It really provides the smaller firms and legal departments an advantage to level the playing field with other large corporations and firms.
There's so much to say on this topic, but my recommendation is to do your research and use the technology in a safe, defensible and ethical way. You don't need to be one of the first adopters and 'revolutionize'...compliment you processes with AI or genAI where you see it adds value, improves workflow streams, and removes administrative burdens and 'evolve' over time.