A legal firm or corporate legal department’s organizational knowledge consists largely of its accumulated data, documents, even email that has important legal information about either a legal organization’s clients or their business. This data would commonly be held in a document management system. But even though it may be captured and stored in one place, leveraging that knowledge for the benefit of the business as well as their clients or customers is often a more elusive practice. AI technology, however, is changing that.
Smart Business spoke with David Cramer, Director of Sales – Legal and Professional Services at Blue Technologies Inc., about how AI is helping legal professionals unleash organizational knowledge.
How does AI help legal organization better leverage their organizational knowledge?
While anyone with the necessary permissions could search through organizational data, sometimes searching what is often a vast amount of data is just not good enough to quickly and easily find exactly what’s needed. That’s time spent away from more pressing tasks. Fortunately, there are AI solutions that can be attached to a firm’s existing document management systems to make it easier to find the exact information that someone needs, and back it up with citations as to where the content is found.
Some projects at law firms require the summarizing of key points in legal documents. Rather than assigning a person or team of people to the task, these AI solutions can get what’s needed in a fraction of a second.
As firms tighten their operational belts, the number of assistants per attorney has dropped, leaving lawyers responsible for many more administrative tasks. AI has helped these lawyers continue to produce high-quality legal work on very tight timelines because rather than spending a lot of time doing summaries and analysis, they can be done in a fraction of the time.
What’s the difference between this solution and the popular public AI models?
There are several document management vendors with AI solutions that sit on top of their document management systems. So, rather than taking an off-the-shelf product and trying to bolt that on, a document management vendor has a specific solution with an interface that is instantly compatible with the existing document management system, making adoption quicker.
These solutions work much like the popular models on the market. Not only will free-form questions generate accurate responses, but many vendors have plugged in a range of starter questions catered to the specific use cases of the law firm or corporate legal department, which can help get users up to speed. Some vendors also offer services that involve training, workshops and assistance with building out questions to better facilitate user adoption of these AI tools.
These systems exclusively utilize data inside a firm’s document management solution. Some share a common core framework backend with some publicly available models while others integrate with popular products, but the solution is based on the workflow of the legal professions.
What does implementation entail?
The market so far has shown there isn’t one AI solution that fits all use cases, so it’s going to be common for firms to utilize several AI solutions. Organizations in the legal space should check with their existing vendors to see what AI solutions they bring to the market. Explore those and discuss the use cases. Also, talk with colleagues in the sector to see what solutions they’ve implemented, and get their feedback on what’s working and what’s not. Once a solution is identified, run a pilot program with a subset of users. If the solution makes sense, bring other users on board. Recognize, however, that some of these solutions ultimately may not be utilized by everyone in the firm, which can be fine if certain practice areas don’t have the specific need of a particular solution. Once a product has been vetted, it can be rolled out to the entire organization. It will likely take a mix and match of AI products because it’s not going to be one solution encompassing all the firm’s or legal department’s needs. ●
INSIGHTS Technology is brought to you by Blue Technologies, Inc.
