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24 VOICES 2024 FOR Legal Tech Trends in AI & Automation
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
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: We believe in 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 avenues 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 evaluations and 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
[Signature]
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Table of Contents Discover 24 Voices on the future of AI and automation for legal professionals.
Introduction
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The Rise of AI in Legal
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Judi Flournoy Chief Information Officer, Kelley Drye Mike Haven Head of Legal Operations, Intel Greg Siskind Co-Founder, Siskind Susser Mike Ferrara Managing Director, FTI Consulting Scott Kelly Senior Manager of Product Management, NetDocuments Kim Konotchick General Manager - Azure Mid-Market Data & AI, US West Region, Microsoft
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Putting AI Into Practice
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Alex Bazin Chief Technology Officer, Lewis Silkin LLP Casey Flaherty Co-Founder, LexFusion Terri Mottershead Executive Director, Centre of Legal Innovation
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Dan Hauck Chief Product Officer, NetDocuments Mitch Owens Chief Information Officer, Gilbert + Tobin
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
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Jeroen Plink Chief Operations Officer, Legaltech Hub
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Michael Barrett Head of Technology and Innovation, Hicksons Lawyers
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Ron Warman Owner, Affinity
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Putting AI Into Practice
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Jon Foster Manager, Deloitte Jill Schornack Vice President of Product, NetDocuments
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Jeffrey Brandt Chief Information Officer, Jackson Kelly Joy Heath Rush Chief Executive Officer, International Legal Technology Association Michael J. McGuire Chief Compliance Officer and Associate General Counsel, Littler Mendelson
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John Arsneault Chief Information Officer, Goulston & Storrs Jae Um Founder & Executive Director, Six Parsecs
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Karen Finch President, Australia Legal Technology Association
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Dr. Megan Ma Assistant Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology, Stanford University Cat Moon Director of Innovation Design, Program on Law & Innovation, Vanderbilt
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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 nine legal tech trends in AI and automation 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 why these trends matter, how to leverage new tools and technologies, and what thought leaders from across the industry are saying.
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What Leading Voices in Legal Are Saying About: The Rise of AI The Use of AI Will Increase in Law Firms and Legal Departments
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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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Judi Flournoy Chief Information Officer, Kelley Drye
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
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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.
that 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 Gen AI 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
Mike Haven Head of Legal Operations, Intel
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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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What Leading Voices in Legal Are Saying About: The Rise of AI The Use of AI Will Increase in Law Firms and Legal Departments
industry in coming years, The National Law Review reports that 36% of lawyers say that AI tools will be mainstrea m 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
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
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24 VOICES FOR 2024 LEGAL TECH TRENDS IN AI & AUTOMATION
A Harvard Business School research study of
text and uses natural language makes it particularly
tasks completed by knowledge workers at the
well-suited to knowledge work generally and legal
Boston Consulting Group found that AI significantly
work specifically. In a panel discussion at the
increased performance and quality for every model
NetDocuments 2023 Inspire user conference, Greg
specification, increasing speed by more than 25%,
Siskind, Co-Founder of Siskind Susser Immigration
performance as rated by humans by more than 40%,
Lawyers, described AI’s appeal: “What do lawyers
and task completion by more than 12%. Further, it
do all day long? We research, we read, we digest
operated in a way that benefited non-knowledge
information, and then we draft. AI can make our
workers the most, though all users benefitted from
day-to-day work easier in a lot of respects because it
AI. 4
can do a lot of those tasks.”
How To Prepare for AI
To capture the potential of AI, consider the following plan of action:
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. • Start measuring results: Collect metrics on key indicators like time 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.
• 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
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