It’s hard to find any business that isn’t leveraging AI these days – though, it’s taken a little longer for people in the legal sphere to catch on to the benefits. Specifically, artificial intelligence (AI) is doing two important things: revolutionizing legal research and increasing the efficiency of case examination.
It’s no secret that AI has been boosting business performance and increasing efficiency for years, and for legal professionals, this is crucial. Those who work with the law rely on research and data, and as such, it’s no surprise that AI is positively transforming the legal sphere.
Traditional legal research is cumbersome
Although we are long past when people had to perform research by manually sifting through paperwork and books, it’s still quite a process to perform research online. For example, it can take an attorney days to find and analyze information relevant to a case they’re working on by using traditional methods. AI offers something more streamlined. A good AI legal research tool, like Law.co, can find the right information fast and perform accurate, complex analysis. This drastically reduces the amount of time spent researching.
One of the best features is actually the ability for attorneys to generate relevant questions for upcoming depositions. If they need ideas for questions, they can input their case information, describe their circumstances, and generate a list of pertinent questions. They might not all be perfect as-is, so that’s when the attorney can go through and manually refine and edit the questions.
AI makes legal research faster and more efficient
When you use AI-powered legal research tools, you can scan huge databases of case information to get relevant cases and statutes in a fraction of the time it would take to find this information manually.
For example, an AI system can discern intent, which will give you results that extend beyond the confines of your specific search terms. The system will find other cases that may not be the same type of case, but if the information in the case files is relevant to your query, it will make those recommendations. This is extremely useful and much more thorough than traditional search tools.
AI can detect risks and liabilities
Another cool thing AI-powered tools can do is detect risks and liabilities in contracts through smart analysis. This is a wonderful feature because it can save attorneys a lot of time and prevent the time it takes to manually review contracts. Of course, all contracts and other legal forms should be reviewed manually, but the benefit of using AI tools is that you won’t have to do so much work. You can run your documents through the system first to have it identify as many issues as possible. Then, you can go through and manually edit and make changes. The difference is, that you won’t have so much manual work to do when you use the AI tool first.
Some AI tools can predict case outcomes
There are other tools that can actually predict potential case outcomes, which can help attorneys plan more effective strategies and legal arguments. This is done when the system identifies patterns based on case details and if an attorney’s current case happens to match other cases closely, the system will predict a possible outcome.
No AI tool can be accurate 100% of the time, but AI predictions are proving to be incredibly accurate compared to human analysis, as long as they aren’t being used to predict events that fall outside the norm of historical data. Even if the case outcomes aren’t exactly as predicted, AI tools can give lawyers better insight than manual methods.
AI won’t replace legal professionals
While AI tools are undoubtedly one of the best resources in the legal sphere, you don’t have to worry if you are a legal professional because AI won’t be taking over your job anytime soon.
Currently, AI tools are capable of doing wonderful things that cut down the amount of time and effort humans have to spend gathering and processing information. However, they are not sentient systems and there are flaws. Those flaws aren’t necessarily bad, but they do create the need for manual work.
If you need to perform legal research or generate contracts, and you’re looking for ways to streamline your research process, AI is an essential asset to have in your toolbox.