Discover what 24 leading voices in legal are saying and what you should know about AI and automation.
24 VOICES
FOR 2024
Legal Tech Trends in AI & Automation
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DISCOVER WHAT 24 LEADING VOICES IN LEGAL ARE SAYING AND WHAT MORE YOU SHOULD KNOW
FROM THE CEO: YOU ARE WHY WE DO THIS
At NetDocuments, our mission is crystal clear — to facilitate peak performance for legal professionals. We are dedicated to collaborating daily across our engineering, product, and customer success teams to uphold this mission. We understand that those in IT, knowledge management, and various roles within law firms, corporate legal departments, or government agencies share a similar objective — to optimize legal professionals’ output. Our Core Values drive us to enable legal professionals by evolving alongside their needs, as we focus on: · Unity through Passionate Effort: Achieving success collaboratively through dedicated hard work · Embracing Innovation: Constantly exploring new avenues to enhance our solutions · Valuing Every Interaction: Understanding the significance of each engagement · Taking Personal Responsibility: Commitment to ownership in all endeavors NetDocuments’ unwavering dedication is reflected in our commitment to building upon a trusted platform, exploring new vectors within the document life cycle, and embracing AI advancements responsibly. We strive to be your trusted partner as cutting-edge AI technologies are forcing us all to make important decisions that have the potential to reinvent the way you work. To help you and your teams navigate these new technologies and the fast rate of change, we’re sharing 24 Voices from the legal community on all things automation and AI. In this report, learn what industry and subject-matter experts are talking about and why it matters to you.
I am extremely thankful to everyone who contributed to bringing this significant report to life. I invite you to dive in and discover our 24 Voices for 2024.
Sincerely, Josh Baxter
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
Introduction
The pace of the modern world keeps accelerating. And it’s no secret that legal departments and law firms are facing new pressures to increase efficiency and deliver value. Today’s teams are looking for ways to meet their goals and reduce burnout.
Technology has helped enable legal teams to improve productivity while making work more enjoyable. AI represents another leap forward in tech advancements, reshaping nearly every aspect of the industry — from law school programs, to how services are provided, to the law firm business model itself. Legal teams and law firms that embrace this change and determine how to harness this transformative technology will be best positioned to thrive in the years ahead.
This report features 24 Voices from across the industry supporting three primary areas of discussion about AI:
• The rise of AI in legal • Putting AI into practice, and • AI’s impact on professionals
Within these areas, nine trends have been identified that are creating seismic change and have the potential to drive unprecedented productivity, allowing teams to be more strategic and deliver better outcomes.
Read on to discover what experts are saying, why these trends matter, and how to prepare.
Note: We’re having some fun with AI and, while all quotes are real, the audio voiceovers within the flipbook are AI-generated. Enjoy!
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Table of Contents
THE RISE OF AI
Judi Flournoy Kelley Drye Greg Siskind Siskind Susser The Use of AI Will Increase in Law Firms and Legal Departments Mike Haven Intel
Page 6
LLM Capabilities Are Evolving
Page 10
Mike Ferrara FTI Consulting
Scott Kelly NetDocuments
Kim Konotchick Microsoft
PUTTING AI INTO PRACTICE
Terri Mottershead Centre for Legal Innovation Alex Bazin Lewis Silkin LLP Intelligent Automation Will Increasingly Drive Legal Workflows Casey Flaherty LexFusion
Page 14
Michael Barrett Hicksons Lawyers Debbie Foster Affinity AI is Hastening the Shift Away from Legacy Systems Ed Sohn Factor AI Integrations Will Significantly Increase Adoption Dan Hauck NetDocuments
Page 18
Jeroen Plink Legaltech Hub
Page 22
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
AI’S IMPACT ON PROFESSIONALS
Kim Wolfe Wells Fargo Jill Schornack NetDocuments Roles and How Legal Professionals Spend Their Time Will Evolve Page 26
Additional Ethical and Regulatory Guidelines Are Coming
Page 30
Joy Heath Rush International Legal Technology Association
Michael J. McGuire Littler Mendelson
Jeffrey Brandt Jackson Kelly
Law Firm Business Models Will Evolve
Page 34
John Arsneault Goulston & Storrs
Kerri Dearing NetDocuments
Jae Um Six Parsecs
AI is Changing Education and Mentorship
Page 38
Dr. Megan Ma Stanford University
Karen Finch Australia Legal Technology Association
Automation, AI, and the Future of Legal
Page 42
Sources
Page 43
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The Rise of AI in Legal The Use of AI Will Increase in Law Firms and Legal Departments
WHAT LEADING VOICES ARE SAYING
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My recommendation when firm leadership asked what we should be doing about generative AI was don’t try to shut it off, but provide guidance. So the first thing we want to do right now is understand. This is here. It’s not going to go away, but we want to provide good guidance notes to our professionals about what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Then as part of our client service and innovation committee, we put together a task force focused on artificial intelligence and how we as a firm would utilize GenAI in the practice of law and in service of our clients, thinking in terms of what our concerns would be and what their concerns would be around the use of this technology. Our clients right now are struggling with the same thing we are struggling with, which is how do we
understand this technology and utilize it? And I think this is really a journey that we have to take with our clients — not necessarily dictate to them how we’re going to do it, but invite them into the conversation. Our journey begins with helping them understand what this technology is. They don’t have to be technologists, but we have to understand it well enough and be willing to have that conversation. We’re doing that very thing at my firm and making certain that we understand what our client’s tolerance is for this type of innovative technology and helping them understand where our guardrails are and how we can leverage those guardrails to give them a level of comfort they might not already have.
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Real quotes. AI-generated audio voiceovers.
Judi Flournoy Chief Information Officer, Kelley Drye
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
“
We’re certainly living and working through an historic moment, and it’s a tipping point for technology adoption. The release of commercially available large language models in late 2022 was the game changer that caused a storm of excitement in legal, and studies show that companies and firms with greater exposure to AI or generative AI following the release of ChatGPT are making substantially more money than those with less exposure. That data is getting noticed at the top of organizations, so we’re seeing a top-down approach to the infusion of AI which, along with process rigor, is the key to accelerating adoption.
innovation in legal is more than generative AI, and not all processes and solutions will require AI. One of the positive unintended consequences of the release of commercially available GenAI has been that it has sparked an innovation renaissance of sorts in companies and firms, and we’re seeing a lot of interest in process improvement and systems thinking from many legal professionals who have not been focused on those things in the past. To the extent that this offers a much needed boost to change management processes and innovation acceleration more generally in firms and legal departments, this technology may actually be even more valuable than we realize today.
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There’s a huge advantage to getting started now, but we still have to remember that
Mike Haven
Head of Legal Operations, Intel
“
As we’re building out automations, it’s always client-focused. Getting things turned around really quickly is a big part of it. But we also want consistency. That’s the beauty of generative AI — we can have consistency in terms of the structure and having the right information. And honestly, one of the bigger pain points in the office has been that our lawyers would like to have more interaction with clients. To be able to get on the phone with them, talk to them,
be their advisors and their counselors, and not necessarily just have to be behind the screen, pounding out documents. So that’s a benefit people appreciate. And I would say don’t assume that you can wait on this. The economics of the practice of law are changing rapidly as a result of AI technology. And whether you like it or not, you have to learn about it and plan how your law firm is going to evolve over time.
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Greg Siskind Co-Founder, Siskind Susser (Inspire AI Award Winner 2023)
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The Rise of AI The Use of AI Will Increase in Law Firms and Legal Departments
WHAT MORE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The National Law Review reports that 36% of lawyers say that AI tools will be mainstream within the next five years. 2
About This Trend AI has enormous potential to accelerate efficiency and improve effectiveness in the legal industry. It can be used in eDiscovery, legal research, document management and automation, due diligence, litigation analysis, improving internal business processes, and more. Lawyers have shown an unprecedented level of interest in recent advancements in AI because of its wide popular appeal and potential to improve their work lives and job satisfaction. A Thomson Reuters Institute survey of lawyers revealed that 82% of respondents feel positive about generative AI’s potential use in the legal profession. 1 Both reflecting and illustrating how AI will impact the legal industry in coming years,
Why the Use of AI Tools is Increasing
AI represents a significant shift in the way technology has been adopted by the legal industry, typically known for taking a cautious approach to implementing new tech. AI has a unique appeal that is driving its rapid adoption. The Wolters Kluwer report found that 73% of legal professionals say they’ll be integrating AI into their legal work in the coming 12 months. 3
The fact that generative AI is designed to work with text and uses natural language
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
A Harvard Business School research study of tasks completed by knowledge workers at the Boston Consulting Group found that AI significantly increased performance and quality for every model specification, increasing speed by more than 25%, performance as rated by humans by more than 40%, and task completion by more than 12%. Further, it operated in a way that benefited non-knowledge workers the most, though all users benefitted from AI. 4
makes it particularly well-suited to knowledge work generally and legal work specifically. In a panel discussion at the NetDocuments 2023 Inspire user conference, Greg Siskind, Co-Founder of Siskind Susser Immigration Lawyers, described AI’s appeal: “What do lawyers do all day long? We research, we read, we digest information, and then we draft. AI can make our day-to-day work easier in a lot of respects because it can do a lot of those tasks.”
How to Prepare for AI
To capture the potential of AI, consider the following plan of action: • Educate lawyers and staff on AI capabilities and limitations: Provide training on basic AI concepts so they understand the technology’s potential and don’t have unrealistic fears or expectations. Internal policies that provide guidelines for using AI will help ensure it’s used responsibly and in line with the firm’s or department’s obligations to clients and stakeholders. • Identify suitable pilot projects: Look for legal processes that have clear workflows and data inputs as good candidates for initial AI experiments. Start small with proof of concept projects. Consider putting together an AI committee that is made up of both IT professionals and fee earners to capture use cases that will benefit multiple individuals in the firm. • Realize AI is a tool to augment lawyers, not replace them: Position AI as a tool to make lawyers more efficient and effective, to free up time to think more strategically and enhance outcomes — not as a way to reduce headcount.
Stress that AI will enhance, not replace, legal skills.
• Recognize and evaluate the ethics of AI uses: Develop guidelines for the ethical use of AI in legal work. Consider biases in training data and recognize that AI models are imperfect. • Find the right AI partners: Identify legal AI vendors and consultants who understand the legal industry and can collaborate closely on integrating AI tools into workflows while protecting client confidentiality and data privacy. savings, error reduction, and employee and client satisfaction to quantify the impact and ROI of AI experiments. • Incorporate feedback: Get regular user feedback on AI tools and leverage it to refine workflows and improve adoption. Learn from challenges as well as successes. • Start measuring results: Collect metrics on key indicators like time
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The Rise of AI in Legal LLM Capabilities Are Evolving
WHAT LEADING VOICES ARE SAYING
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There’s currently a lot of interest in how to tap into machine learning to answer some of the typical questions a general counsel would ask relative to contracts. For example, ‘What have we agreed to? How much money do we spend?,’ and other historical considerations that can inform decision
making. In the future — in the near future, hopefully — we’ll be able to use machine learning to tap into some of those data stores, allowing a better understanding of risk across contracts and forecasting for future spend based on prior outcomes.
Mike Ferrara Managing Director, FTI Consulting
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
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