Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly changing the way law firms operate. The legal industry has been slow to adopt new technologies, but AI is now being embraced by many firms as a way to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
One of the most significant ways that AI is impacting law firms is through the use of the legal research tools provided by platforms like Trellis, LexisNexis, and Westlaw. These tools use natural language processing and machine learning to quickly search through vast amounts of legal data, including case law, local statutes, and court filings. This not only saves time, but also helps lawyers to make more informed decisions, as attorneys can quickly and accurately highlight the legal issues, anomalies, and inconsistencies that might emerge over the litigation process.
Another area where AI is having an impact is in document review. In the past, document review was a time-consuming and tedious process, often done manually by paralegals or associates. However, AI-powered tools can now quickly scan through large volumes of documents, not only highlighting key word and phrases, but also synthesizing the actual content of each document. As such, AI is helping attorneys categorize documents by topic, relevance, and type, but it is also summarizing lengthy documents, producing sentiment analyses, and identifying patterns and themes across document sets.
AI is also being used in the area of contract review and management. AI-powered tools can quickly scan through individual contracts, identifying potential issues and flagging any areas that need further attention. For example, AI can identify key terms and clauses, such as payment terms, warranties, and indemnities. This can help to reduce the risk of errors and ensure that contracts are compliant with relevant laws and regulations. Some tools can even automate the drafting of contracts by extracting relevant data from previous contracts and creating new ones based on pre-defined templates. There are also a number of tools that can provide contract monitoring. These services monitor contracts for important events, such as renewals, expirations, and milestones, alerting legal teams whenever action is needed.
In conclusion, AI technology is having a significant impact on the legal industry, by making legal research and document review more efficient and reducing the risk of errors. As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more ways in which it will be used to improve the legal process, and benefit clients and firms alike.
Nicole Clark
Prior to founding Trellis, Nicole Clark was a business litigation and labor and employment attorney who handled litigation in both state and federal courts. She regularly represented multinational corporations in claims ranging from high-profile trade secret disputes to complex class-action litigation. Frustrated by sending internal emails and collecting anecdotes on judges in order to make strategic case recommendations, she built Trellis to solve her own need for access to data, information, and analytics at the state trial court level. Prior to law school, Nicole attended Bard College, beginning her college coursework at the age of sixteen. She graduated with honors from University of Massachusetts Amherst with a BA in Journalism, and received her Juris Doctorate from Rutgers School of Law in Newark, NJ. Nicole sat for the Bar Exam in California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and remains licensed to practice law in all three states.