Legal AI and Your Firm Strategy

As more and more jurisdictions across the world develop guidelines for lawyers to adapt to this world in which Generative AI is all around us, it's worth taking note how these considerations impact law firm strategy.

Technology has always had some influence over how law firms operate. With modern computing, the 6-minute unit solidified itself as the predominant way lawyers valued themselves and charged clients. eDiscovery has also arguably changed the nature of the litigation approach law firms take, and the types of advice they deliver to their clients.

Therefore, Generative AI is likely to have impact on law firm strategy. The question is - in what way?

In this edition, I explore Guidance notes and commentaries published by the New Zealand Law Society, Australian Law Council, Queensland Law Society, the Law Society of New South Wales and the Law Institute of Victoria.

Opportunities

Whilst the topic of Generative AI in law can feel overwhelming, it's important to start off positively. The technology has lots of potential and is growing in its practical application in law.

According to Microsoft , 75% of the world's knowledge workers are using AI. Most of these (78%) are using their own AI logins or tools. Think ChatGPT or Bing. The opportunity here is that knowledge workers, including lawyers, are already starting to build their AI skills and are seeing the positive benefits of these tools in their workplaces.

Specifically for lawyers, the benefits are already being realised. As the NZLS points out:

• eDiscovery tools already incorporate AI technologies;
• Productivity improvements can be met for contract analysis, template generation and legal drafting;
• AI is also a creative legal research tool;
• For voluminous work, AI is useful for summarisation;
• There are data analytics benefits and enhanced prediction capabilities with AI; and
• The prospect of improving access to justice via AI chatbots is also promising.

The Australian Law Council acknowledges the broader opportunities of AI; "machine learning and other forms of automated decision-making offer important benefits, including the potential to contribute to strengthening the economy, increasing the cohesion and inclusiveness of society, supporting sustainability and the efficient use of resources, and increasing human wellbeing."

AI opportunities in your law firm

As the majority of legal services are delivered by firms with fewer than 50 staff, having a robust business strategy which incorporates Legal AI tools is a must for 2024 and beyond.

Placing these opportunities from the broader context to your law firm business can seem daunting. In many ways, it feels like this is a bigger thing to deal with than just on the law firm level. However, the reality is that the effectiveness of Australia's and New Zealand's legal systems is predicated on the success of small firms.

As the majority of legal services are delivered by firms with fewer than 50 staff, having a robust business strategy which incorporates Legal AI tools is a must for 2024 and beyond.

Translating these system-wide opportunities into law firm and lawyer-level ones is part of the law firm business strategy process. What they mean for one firm would be different to another. But here's a list to get you and your team started:

• Workflow benefits to alleviate the firm's biggest pain points in delivering legal services;
• Reduce the overall cost to deliver outcomes for clients;
• Improve lawyer and legal staff welfare through more efficient practices;
• Address supervision gaps which were previously invisible due to the volumes of work; and
• Improve team critical and legal reasoning through the prompt engineering skill-building process.

Risks

As an eternal optimist, I focused on the opportunities primarily because almost every source there is a deep focus on the risks. I shouldn't be surprised, risk identification and mitigation is the currency of modern lawyering.

In this case, I'm going to keep this section short and if you want to read deeper into the risks of Legal AI in practice, you can refer to the references at the end of this article. Some of the risks identified are:

• Accuracy - this is mainly in relation to legal research and case summarisation, however the technology is constantly improving.
• Bias - this is in relation to the data sets in which the AI models are trained.
• Privacy and data security - this both relates to model training as well as use. To be clear, it is ill-advised to disclose confidential information outside of the trusted law firm systems and this is not a risk restricted to the AI question.
• Intellectual property - this is a risk because it is a growing area of law surrounding the use of generative AI trained on copyrighted materials.

Then there is the question of legal practice ethics in this era of AI. Some suggest that now is a great time to review everything. As someone not content on the reason, "this is the way we have always done it" to do something, I encourage all law firms to start asking themselves of the benefits of doing anything in particular ways.

A Checklist?

The NZLS Guidance has an adapted Law Society of England and Wales checklist. Meanwhile, the Australian law societies are yet to make public a practical checklist. The closest is the Queensland Law Society's Guidance Statement No 37, with reference (but no link) to material providing implementation and risk management information. New South Wales has a general Ethics Policy for all businesses, not just law. What these resources have in common is setting up guiding principles in these key areas:

1. Purpose (usually for community or humanity's benefit)
2. Privacy and security
3. Bias
4. Transparency
5. Accountability

This is the area of the article most prone to the rapid changes in this area. If you are aware of resources and materials for law practice business planning around AI policies, please leave a comment and link. I hope to update this article as more information and guidance becomes available.

References:

• NZLS | Generative AI guidance for lawyers: balancing the opportunities and risks (lawsociety.org.nz)
• No.37 Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice - Queensland Law Society (qls.com.au)
• Artificial Intelligence: Australia’s Ethics Framework - Law Council of Australia
• A solicitor’s guide to responsible use of artificial intelligence - Law Society Journal (lsj.com.au)
• Ethics: Legal ethics and AI (liv.asn.au)
• How generative AI is shaking up the legal profession (liv.asn.au)
• New AI tech regulation doesn’t need a new wheel | The Law Society of NSW
• Mandatory Ethical Principles for the use of AI | Digital.NSW

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