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May 29, 2024
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May 31, 2024
With regards to the successful integration of legal AI into any firm or company, finding the right AI vendor is absolutely crucial. In order to find the perfect match, you will need to rigorously evaluate AI vendors. This procurement process may seem intimidating at first, but don’t worry. Allow us to walk you through the important questions to ask and the rights things to look for.
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Artificial Intelligence is steadily gaining traction in the legal field. As the quality of legal AI is increasing, more and more firms are integrating AI to increase their efficiency and remain competitive. This trend is not limited to law firms exclusively, as insurance firms, accountancy firms and real estate firms are also starting to see the huge benefits of integrating legal AI into their processes. However, turning to legal AI involves specific risks as well. Because AI is such a new - and often misunderstood - product, legislators are lagging behind when it comes to regulating AI. This means that you’ll have to trust your AI vendor to supply a product that can deliver what it promises. With regards to the successful integration of legal AI into any firm or company, finding the right AI vendor is absolutely crucial. In order to find the perfect match, you will need to rigorously evaluate AI vendors. This procurement process may seem intimidating at first, but don’t worry. Allow us to walk you through the important questions to ask and the rights things to look for.
Don’t allow your imagination to be captured solely by marketing campaigns. When selecting the AI vendor that is best suited for your business objectives, set specific goals and standards. Be clear what you want to achieve with the legal AI product and make this explicit: ask the AI vendor how their product could streamline your business processes and boost efficiency, not merely in abstracto, but in concreto. Don’t hesitate to ask critical questions as well.
Here’s an example. Say the bulk of your workload consists of contract reviews, a common requirement across many different sectors. In that case, you’ll need to find an AI vendor that understands the nuances of the specific tasks that contract reviews entail. You’ll need a legal AI solution that is designed to handle contract reviews in an efficient way. Anyone with contract review experience will understand that analysing a contract is not some abstract legal exercise. Reviews are always done from the perspective of a specific party. Clauses are drafted with the interests of a specific party in mind. Legal AI that is capable of performing general reviews that don’t consider the individual outlook of you or your clients will be too inaccurate to offer real value. The legal AI should be capable of integrating the outlook of the individual parties into its assessment of contractual provisions.
Developing legal AI is a team effort. It involves a very diverse skill set. A successful AI product requires decent software engineers, data scientists and AI specialists, but those people can only bring the product up to a certain level. If an AI solution is to have a real practical use in the legal field, the AI vendor should have a team of people with professional legal experience as well. If legal AI is supposed to think like a real lawyer, it should be developed with people who know what that thought process looks like, people who know which questions a lawyer deems important.
Furthermore, in order to develop a product that is up to industry standards, your AI vendor should engage in partnerships with industry leaders. The value of partnerships with prominent firms cannot be underestimated. It ensures a product that is practical and immediately deployable.
Additionally, if legal experts are involved, you will be able to provide detailed feedback about the product. Legal professionals can function as an intermediator between your company’s legal department and the AI experts developing the product.
Finally, expert legal guidance during the product development process will result in a product that is truly legal and not merely AI. Over the recent years, AI large language models (LLMs) have gained fame - and some notoriety - for their innovative potential, such as Chat GPT and Microsoft Copilot. While these product may be breaking new ground, they are not necessarily fit for legal applications. A distinction should be made between generic AI LLMs in and legal AI, because generic AI might produce outputs that are not reliable and lead to liability issues later on. In the long-term, using generic AI technology for specifically legal applications might prove to be an efficiency decrease instead of an increase.
Here are some concrete tips:
Data is the backbone of AI. However, data poses two distinct problems.
Firstly, the training data should be qualitative. The quality - and quantity - of the data used to train the AI will have a decisive impact on the value of the output.
In order to verify the training data quality of your AI vendor, here are some key questions:
The second problem posed by data is cyber security and privacy. In order to function properly, legal AI will need to have access to certain information: contracts, policies, terms and conditions, etcetera. It goes without saying that all of this data is of a sensitive nature.
With regards to data security, these are some questions to consider:
Implementing an AI-powered tool could bring radical efficiency improvements. However, AI is not magic, so you’ll have to consider how to concretely enhance your existing processes. This enhancement might entail some growth pains. It might even require your legal department to consider starting from scratch and devising an entirely new process.
In order to ensure that the change to your workflow is not too disruptive, you’ll want to choose an AI vendor that properly introduces your legal professionals to the features of the product. This calls for a thorough onboarding process and ongoing support during the integration process.
In order to stay on top of change management, put these questions to your AI vendor:
AI can help increase efficiency and provide useful insights, but its limitations must be understood. Responsible use of AI, with human oversight, is important to mitigate potential risks in the legal domain.
Here are some key questions:
While the price of the product is not really a risk, it does represent a cost that your company will have to bear in order to integrate the legal AI application. Therefore, as a final piece of advice, we would recommend to get a clear picture of what the cost of the product will entail.
Here are some things you would want to consider:
When selecting an AI vendor, it's crucial to align the vendor's offerings with your business objectives. The best way to do this is by asking many, many questions. Key considerations include the vendor's technology, expertise, support services, and level of transparency. By carefully assessing these factors, you can minimize the risks associated with implementing the vendor's AI product while maximizing the return on their investment. This comprehensive approach ensures a balanced and informed decision that supports your business's long-term goals.