How Artificial Intelligence is Impacting the Legal Sector Today
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technological innovation that has transformed various industries — and the legal sector is no exception. The European Commission has encouraged the development of AI by increasing its annual investments by 70%, leading to €1.5 billion in total investments for the period of 2018-2020. Such a move is encouraging legal firms all across Europe to adopt AI into their practices, but how exactly does the technology benefit them? With all the anxiety over AI potentially making human workers obsolete, this article will outline the benefits of AI adoption for legal firms, and how it won’t take over jobs — but instead, make them better and easier.
Reviews contracts and documents
Reading through contracts and various documents for errors and mistakes just got faster with AI. The Association for Computing Machinery reports that AI was found to be better at finding loopholes and risks in non-disclosure agreements compared to professional veterans, taking just 26 seconds with an 85% accuracy. This study proves that AI can help clients and legal experts answer the question of “Can I sign this?” within a minute or less, shortening the turnaround time for contracts and preventing a length process between passing contracts between clients.
Does legal research
AI has the power to process and analyse a mountain of data — something that can benefit experts in the legal industry greatly. Instead of taking an excessive amount of time to do research on a single case, which can lead to exorbitant fees, Special Counsel highlight how AI makes law firms more efficient by taking on menial tasks. AI can remove duplicate records, group data, and identify relevant information within seconds. This takes the weight off attorneys and lawyers, who can then choose to focus their time on high-value tasks, such as talking to clients, handling negotiations, or showing up in court.
Conducts due diligence
Another task that keeps most lawyers busy is having to look for background information for their clients. This includes double-checking facts and figures and assessing legal risks for an individual. Doing background checks on a particular individual or business can be considered an important task – but it’s something AI can expedite anyway. AI can look through a host of unstructured documents and contracts stored within your organisation’s system to extract relevant information for your review, making the whole process faster and more efficient.
Has the ability to give insight on legal outcomes
Given that AI can search through enormous amounts of data in the blink of an eye, our writer Yasemin Yazan explains that AI has the power to make new connections from its discoveries, allowing legal experts to view things from a new light. In fact, an AI lawyer developed by IBM named Ross is already providing this service, and while Ross doesn’t go to court, the AI lawyer advises other lawyers in the firm based on data from the entire body of law and other secondary resources.
Deloitte predicts that over 100,000 legal roles will be automated by 2036, and given the benefits of AI, it can only be good for firms across the world. As AI benefits organisations at all stages, it will come as no surprise to see more and more firms adopting the technology into their operations.