The increasingly widespread adoption of artificial intelligence also brings innovation to the legal industry. Amidst this innovation, however, there are questions and concerns about the scope of AI tools for law firms and their ethical considerations.
In this article, you will learn not only about the many uses for artificial intelligence in law but also the answers to top questions on the subject, including:
- How is AI used in law?
- What is an example of AI in law?
- What are the negatives of AI in law?
- How many law firms use AI?
- Is AI a threat to law firms?
- What is the scope of AI in law?
How is AI Being Used in Law?
To begin our exploration of the subject, here are some common uses for AI in law.
Legal Research
AI-based legal research tools can immediately take action, crawling through massive data in legal history, case laws, statutes, and regulations to uncover relevant information.
Powered by natural language processing (NLP), these tools analyze the linguistic aspects of legal questions. Then, they present accurate results in a fraction of the time it would take a human to do the same.
Applications like ROSS Intelligence or Westlaw Edge incorporate artificial intelligence elements to deliver in-depth legal research services. The result is that lawyers will need to spend less time on research. This frees them up time for strategic work like case strategy development and client counseling.
Reviewing Legal Documents
AI can rapidly review emails, contracts, and other legal documents, saving lawyers from endless hours spent on manual reviews. Although AI cannot replace lawyers outright, this is an example of how it can certainly help them do their jobs more efficiently.
You can also use AI-powered chat to look for certain phrases, information, and other data from legal documents. An AI algorithm can offer the answers you’re looking for in seconds.
For example, Kira Systems is an AI-powered contract review and analysis software that uses machine learning to extract information from contracts and other documents. It quickly identifies key clauses, risks, and obligations for law firms and other professional services to review.
Predictive Analytics
AI-based predictive analytics in law work just as they function in other industries: they analyze past data patterns to project future outcomes. These tools can help lawyers predict the likelihood of certain outcomes based on their analysis of the data they are fed.
Similarly, predictive analytics can also be deployed to predict—with more accuracy–the length and costs associated with litigation. This way, law firms can provide their clients with more accurate information to help them decide whether to move forward with their case or not.
Some companies, like Lex Machina and Premonition, use predictive analytics based on historical outcomes to predict litigation trends.
Contract Management and Analysis
Some artificial intelligence tools can read, draft, review, and manage contracts. Machine learning allows them to automatically identify important clauses and suggest revisions while ensuring compliance with new regulations.
AI contract analysis tools are designed to make sure all important terms are accounted for in contracts and to identify potential risks. Ideally, this means less errors and a faster overall contract lifecycle.
Legal Chatbots
Chatbots assisted by AI can handle common client queries, provide legal information, and even aid with some preliminary consultations. This concept extends to conversational legal AI chatbots. These tools can save lawyers from answering repetitive legal queries with the help of NLP parsing technology.
They can also take the form of chatbots which can help triage client issues by directing clients to appropriate legal resources or by scheduling appointments with attorneys.
These options for artificial intelligence in law should be used with caution. They are meant to assist lawyers, rather than taking over their roles completely.
What are the Negatives of AI in Law?
There are valid concerns surrounding artificial intelligence in law.
Here are five of the most potentially challenging aspects of AI in law:
Displacing Legal Jobs
Among the top concerns about the impact of AI on law is whether legal jobs will be lost to automation. AI tools can now complete some tasks that junior lawyers, paralegals, or administrative officers traditionally handle.
These employees could be subject to layoffs or having their roles redefined.
Critics argue that even if AI makes legal work more efficient, it could also result in a lack of human oversight. This is risky because a level of oversight is necessary for nuanced legal interpretations and making ethical decisions.
Ethics and Biases
AI algorithms are limited by the data that trains them. This means that if biases are present in the training data, artificial intelligence could reinforce or even magnify them. Nowhere is this risk more problematic than in a context like the legal system, where neutrality and fairness are at its core.
If AI heightens existing biases, it could result in biased legal outcomes.
In 2023, a class action suit was brought against DoNotPay, an AI tool that pledges to help you fight back in a number of sticky situations. This includes providing legal information, rather than legal services, to help users challenge parking tickets, car repossessions, price gouging, and more.
The class action suit, which DoNotPay settled in June 2024, alleged that the AI tool provided legal services and engaged in unauthorized legal practice. Since the class action suit was brought against them, DoNotPay has stopped marketing itself as the “world’s first robot lawyer.”
The DoNotPay case is a good reminder of the need for regulation and oversight of how AI tools are used in law.
Data Security and Privacy
Artificial intelligence in law manages a great deal of sensitive and confidential data. This access raises serious questions over data protection and privacy. Unsecured AI systems pose a serious data breach risk. This risks client confidentiality, and possibly costs law firms heavily in terms of both legal and financial consequences.
Cost and Accessibility
While AI-powered tools may save law firms money down the road, the initial investment in some AI technology can be quite high. This financial hurdle could be seen as a barrier to entry for AI tools for larger law firms. It could also serve to further deepen the fault lines when it comes to equity in the legal industry.
Sole practitioners and small firms may struggle to compete with large firms with the means to deploy advanced artificial intelligence solutions.
Regulatory Challenges
The legal framework for AI is ever-changing. There are many open questions regarding the legislation and legal demands for applying AI to law.
How best to negotiate complex issues, including liability for AI errors, compliance with data protection laws, and the admissibility of AI-generated evidence in court, is not entirely straightforward.
Above all, it’s important to remember that relying solely on AI for lawyers will result in mistakes and blind spots that a human practicing attorney would not likely make.
How Many Law Firms Use AI?
According to data from LexisNexis’ 2024 Investing in Legal Innovation Survey: The Rise of Gen AI at Top Firms & Corporations report, most large law firms plan to increase their investment in Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) over the next five years.
There appears to be a gap in adoption between bigger and smaller law firms.
More than half of Am Law 200 firms (the 101-200th highest-grossing American law firms) have already invested in legal artificial intelligence tools. For non-AM Law firms with 50 or more attorneys, this number falls to 20%. The study also reports that nearly half (45%) of Am Law 200 firms use Gen AI. Just over 20% of other large non-AM firms use it.
Other reports show even higher rates of adoption and interest in artificial intelligence. This includes a 2023 Wolters Kluwer survey of 700 legal employees. Almost three-quarters (73%) of respondents expect to use Gen AI for legal work over the next year.
Is AI a Threat to Law Firms?
Some lawyers have concerns about job displacement, but most experts believe that AI will not replace lawyers entirely. But, as Miami attorney Francisco “Frank” Ramos Jr. of Clarke Silverglate puts it: “Lawyers who use AI will replace those who don’t.
He adds: “For those of us who bill by the hour, creating efficiencies for clients is a way to differentiate your practice and literally provide more for less.”
Above all, remember that relying solely on AI for lawyers will result in mistakes and blind spots a human would not likely make. However, there are also many ways in which the strategic use of artificial intelligence will enhance legal services rather than detract from them.
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