So, when people (and many lawyers!) say they are fearful of relying on AI as an accuracy tool, we understand their concerns. But the fact is: robots and humans make errors. So why not have another layer of protection and risk management? Why not try an AI assistant that produces results in seconds and minutes rather than hours?

In today’s fast-paced legal landscape, staying ahead of the game means embracing technological advancements. By leveraging the capabilities of generative AI, a powerful tool that holds immense potential for law firms, legal professionals can streamline their processes, enhance productivity, and deliver higher-quality outcomes for their clients.

Let’s look at just some of the remarkable benefits that generative AI brings to law firms and how it is revolutionising the legal industry:

Enhanced legal research

Legal research is a fundamental aspect of legal practice, and generative AI takes it to a whole new level. It can analyse vast amounts of data in a fraction of the time it would normally take a human to perform the exact same tasks. Generative AI combined with vector search can quickly sift through complex legal databases, previous cases, statutes, and regulations to provide you with answers, a summary, or an analysis. This empowers lawyers to access relevant and up-to-date information, enabling them to make well-informed decisions and provide accurate legal advice.

Improved contract analysis

Analysing contracts for risks, inconsistencies, and compliance issues is a critical function for law firms. Generative AI tools such as the tool developed by our sister business, Titan Lawyer, can quickly scan and analyse large volumes of contracts, extract key provisions, and identify potential risks or discrepancies. This helps lawyers ensure contract integrity, mitigate risks, stress test their documents and provide valuable insights to their clients. By accelerating the contract review process, generative AI boosts efficiency and minimises the chances of errors or oversights.

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Enhanced legal predictions

Generative AI can analyse historical case data, identify patterns, and make predictions about potential case outcomes. By analysing various factors such as relevant precedents, case similarities, and legal principles, generative AI offers legal practitioners helpful insights into the potential outcomes of a particular case. This enables lawyers to make more informed strategic decisions and effectively manage client expectations.

Augmented due diligence

Due diligence plays a vital role in complex legal transactions such as mergers and acquisitions. Generative AI streamlines the due diligence process by automatically reviewing large volumes of documents, identifying critical information, and flagging potential risks. This expedites the process, reduces human errors, and ensures comprehensive analysis, facilitating better decision making and minimising legal vulnerabilities. Platforms like Kira, Imprima and Document Intelligence are all charging forward in the legal due diligence space, and these tools have radically altered the timelines of the M&A processes.

Cost efficiency

By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, generative AI reduces the need for manual labour, ultimately leading to cost savings for law firms. With fewer billable hours spent on routine tasks, legal professionals can allocate their time and expertise to higher-value activities, like problem solving, strategising, and providing better service to their clients. Moreover, AI tools often come with scalable pricing models, allowing law firms to choose cost-effective solutions that align with their needs and budgets.

Conclusion

The Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia observed: “To a degree, the future must remain unknown. Artificial intelligence and its effect on courts, the profession and the law will change the landscape of life in ways we cannot predict.”

What we do know is that generative AI is transforming the legal industry by empowering law firms with enhanced efficiency, accuracy, and productivity.

From expediting legal research and document generation to stress testing contracts and enabling data-driven predictions and improved due diligence, generative AI is revolutionising the way legal professionals work, and there will be many evolutions to come.

As Mark Cohen commented in Forbes recently, generative AI tools like GPT and other technological advances could fundamentally change business, with a wide array of use cases, including marketing and sales, operations IT/engineering, risk and legal, HR, and streamlining customer service.

But the power of machines alone, he said, will not solve all of humanity’s problems.

“Human beings will play a key role, too. This requires adaptation, a key but often underestimated component of digital transformation. Generative AI and other tools like robotics and data-insight enabling platforms have the potential to improve business as well as the human experience. To realise that potential requires investment in human beings — change management, cultural adaptation, lifetime learning, diversity, reevaluating hiring criteria, upskilling, cross-functional workforces, and integration of the supply chain to cite a few,” Mr Cohen said.

By embracing this technology and training lawyers to use these tools in their daily practice, law firms can unlock new opportunities, elevate their services, and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive market.

Yes, there will be issues to navigate along the way: ethics, discrimination, protection of intellectual property, regulation of AI, data privacy and confidentiality. But the benefits of these tools are absolutely worth the ongoing dialogue and the development of the technology.

As legal futurist Richard Susskind pointed out recently, generative AI tools like Chat GPT are in their infancy. There are bloggers and commentators writing a lot about its current capabilities and limitations, but, he said, they are missing the bigger strategic point: “The point is not ChatGPT based on 3.5. The interesting question is to imagine if it is GPT 7.5, where you have many generations on where the wrinkles have been ironed out. That’s what we’ve got to think about strategically.”

We use our AI tool, Titan Lawyer, every day in both our compliance business, Compliance Quarter, and in our law firm, Law Quarter. Getting on board with generative AI is not just a choice; it is a strategic imperative for law firms looking to thrive in the digital era.

Jacqui Jubb is a partner at Law Quarter.