How is artificial intelligence used in law?

Jan 06, 2023

Written By Lauren Ainscough

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has assumed increasing importance within the legal sector in recent years. It is vital for law firms, legal professionals and prospective lawyers to recognise the legal applications of AI which have been developed and the potential impact of these on legal jobs and processes. Let us consider the opportunities and challenges posed by AI for legal practice.

What does AI have to offer?

Intended to replicate human cognitive processes, AI technology allows computers to complete tasks typically performed by humans, including quickly processing mass data, examining patterns and drawing conclusions.

Law firms adopting AI-based software can profit from improved efficiency, accuracy and cost-effectiveness, benefits which improve services for clients. This is because AI enables law firms to automate ‘lower-level’, routine (and often costly) jobs.

This enhances efficiency by freeing up more time to focus on client interaction and higher-skilled tasks such as complex analysis and strategic planning. The automation of these routine tasks also eliminates human error, improving the accuracy of tasks such as contract reviewing and legal research.

Legal research

AI has transformed the way in which legal professionals conduct legal research, especially when searching for applicable case law. Large online legal data resources such as Westlaw and LexisNexis employ search algorithms that use AI. Legal professionals can provide the AI with relevant key terms and the algorithm will return tailored search results which only include applicable precedent.

The tailoring of results means lawyers need not trawl through thousands of general and irrelevant search results, making legal research more efficient whilst limiting the time employees spend on repetitive work.

Document analysis

During the discovery phase of litigation, lawyers must review all material pertinent to the issue and draw conclusions on which documents and precedents will be relevant to their client’s case. This process is often time-consuming and laborious.

Fortunately, AI from companies such as Ross Intelligence has streamlined the document review process. Legal professionals can now take advantage of predictive coding software, technology that effectively ‘learns’ how to rank the relevance of documents having had an initial ‘training session’ with a lawyer who marks a particular document as relevant.

The software is then able to review vast numbers of documents and flag which of those are similarly relevant, in effect acting as a legal adviser. Similar AI-supported document review technology can also be used for disclosure and due diligence purposes.

The use of AI in the discovery and disclosure processes means that extensive manual document review (and the high costs associated with it) can be avoided, as well as bolstering the efficiency and accuracy of these processes by ensuring counsel only prioritises relevant documents and information.

Contract management and review

Drawing up, tracking and reviewing contracts is a necessary but tedious and time-consuming process for law firms. However, companies such as Lawgeex and Clearlaw have changed the game by creating AI software which automatically examines contracts. This software can point out issues with drafting and intellectual property, suggest areas for improvement and even accurately predict the time a counterparty will take to approve a contract. Software like ThoughtRiver goes even further by automatically flagging risky contracts.

AI has transformed contract management, proving more efficient than manual human processes by performing extensive searches within a fraction of the time. This is all whilst reducing the likelihood of costly errors in language or classification and therefore the likelihood of contractual disputes or litigation. Lawyers can instead focus on more complex tasks.

Litigation outcome prediction

One of the most useful yet controversial uses of AI in law is for predicting the outcome of litigation. AI software does this by reviewing vast quantities of existing case law with similar facts and providing a statistical analysis based on trends in the decisions reached by judges.

AI in this context aids lawyers to accurately advise clients on the best litigation strategy, potentially avoiding costly and risky court proceedings where a case is unlikely to succeed. This said, we must be careful to ensure that algorithms don’t simply reproduce human bias (which potentially entails discrimination), occurring where a system’s underlying data includes systemic bias.

Risks and challenges

Despite the positive opportunities for AI in law outlined above, AI can’t be used to its full potential or be fully accepted by the legal profession unless its risks and challenges are fully acknowledged and mitigated against, including the issue of bias mentioned above.

AI poses problems for transparency, which requires decisions to be explained and justified. As AI software becomes more advanced and autonomous, it becomes increasingly hard to decipher its inner workings. This fuels scepticism among some legal professionals, their clients and the public.

Scepticism surrounding AI is also fuelled by the complex ethical questions that this technology raises. For example, as AI becomes more autonomous, should it be afforded some form of personhood status? Would it then have rights? Additionally, powerful autonomous systems have the potential to threaten security when in the wrong hands, as well as produce unintended consequences. How do we control intelligent systems?

Will AI take over law?

Many within the legal profession are concerned that their jobs will be made obsolete because of the efficiency, accuracy and cost-effectiveness offered by AI. Deloitte predicts that over 100,000 jobs in the legal sector may be automated by 2036.

However, whilst low-skill, routine tasks are very likely to be gradually taken over, the more widespread introduction of AI in law will likely instead change the overall landscape of jobs in the legal sector, creating more time for client-facing work and new opportunities in fields such as AI legal engineering.

Some developers are aiming for ‘true’, fully autonomous AI, i.e. where computers are as smart as humans and don’t require human input or oversight. For now, AI isn’t truly intelligent and remains just one (helpful) part of a lawyer’s decision-making process.

Legal Technology