Artificial Intelligence and Legal Industry

Artificial intelligence or more commonly referred to as AI is an increasingly popular discipline and a topic of interest. AI is a fairly dominant sector of computer science now, with the simple premise being to replicate human intelligence into a machine function. AI is already incorporated in a lot of industries. For example, Google uses AI for its navigation services, calculating travel times, traffic congestion, expected delays and so forth. Airplanes use AI for autopilot - usually in commercial flights. Even simple functions such as email detecting spam, and filtering certain emails utilizes AI technology. In the legal industry the role of AI is not clearly established, nor is it well understood or even seen as applicable. However, with the growing sector of legal technology and growth of this sector as an industry, there have been some early uses and incorporation of AI.

In the legal industry, AI can be seen in a select few law firms, and some companies setting up advisory and research services. Currently, AI is utilized by law firms and lawyers for preliminary work, such as doing their due diligence, which can entail background checks and so forth. It can also provide insights, and analytics, whether these be predictions, further information. And automation of some processes, which can include some writing, such as writing basic clauses of a contract which remain standard.

To go more in depth about the uses. The function of due diligence is to confirm the facts and details of a case. Using AI to cover the task of due diligence is helpful as it can help speeding up the process. Developing AI technology to do background checks, uncover facts, even using it as a tool to run reviews. There are also prediction softwares developed on the basis of AI. These prediction softwares are based around predicting outcomes and results by using several factors of the given case, and comparing it to precedents, similar cases and such. There are also a lot of analytics based software, which can track win/loss records of cases, and even track certain records of judges, such as trends and patterns.

More standard use of AI is in tasks such as document automation. Legal work inevitably involves a lot of paperwork. Document automation makes it possible to speed up this process. For certain contracts, such as real estate, basic contracts, law firms can have software with preset templates and just input their clients information to automate and speed up the otherwise tedious process. Furthermore, intellectual property has become a great point of dispute in the legal industry. AI can help track IP, content and portfolios to track content and see who has actual rights over it, this otherwise could be a painstaking task. Lastly, all the billing can be done electronically through automated software. Lawyers do not have to worry about logging billable hours.

AI has attracted a copious amount of investment in recent years, and it is clear that AI is finding its way into many industries. Legal industry is merely just an industry that AI has only slightly touched. It is definitely interesting to see how AI will play out in the upcoming years in the legal industry. What do our readers think of this? Please let us know!

Fahd Shah
CounselConnect