Washington Lawyer - November 2018 - 24

In part, that's because AI carries the weight of its oversized reputation,
colored by science fiction fantasies and speculative fears about robot lawyers.
In reality, AI is a complex formulation of technologies - machine learning,
natural language processing, image and voice recognition, and data-sleuthing
algorithms - that approximate human-like intelligence within computer
applications.
AI technology for law firms isn't actually new. For more than three decades,
legal tech evangelists have championed AI's potential to revolutionize the law
with its processing power and machine learning, but the buzz never seemed
to be realized. AI remained too edgy, unproven, and complex.
Today, AI has become a tool to improve productivity and efficiency. Law firms
have gradually introduced AI innovations, finding ways to automate some of
their most repetitive and pressing tasks. AI has demonstrated its value in legal
research; in reviews of contracts, citations, and clauses; in intelligent and interactive interfaces; in legal analytics tools to mine data; and in text summarization.
As a highly esteemed technology, where the outlines of its real influence are
only just beginning to emerge, AI can facilitate legal processes and improve
client relations by doing work more swiftly, proficiently, and cost effectively.
A well-managed AI platform can strengthen the services that law firms have
to offer clients, ensuring advice is guided by human experience and AI-driven
analytics.

I think we're on the verge
of a new golden age of law
where law firms are really
leaning into these new
enabling technologies,
where machine plus lawyer
has the potential to deliver
some very compelling
advances in the quality and
the efficiency of how legal
advisory services are
prepared and developed.
JOHN R. FERNANDEZ, Dentons

"I think we're on the verge of a new golden age of law where law firms are really
leaning into these new enabling technologies, where machine plus lawyer has
the potential to deliver some very compelling advances in the quality and the
efficiency of how legal advisory services are prepared and developed," says
John R. Fernandez, a partner and chief innovation officer at Dentons.

A SLOW MARCH
Law firms have long been slow to embrace new technologies, due in no small
part to the legal community's well-known resistance to change and aversion
to risk. After all, the legal practice has evolved over the last century, but not until
the last decade has technology begun to refashion firm operations.
"There is, naturally, I think, with many lawyers a reluctance to change because
so much of what we do is based on what we did before," says William T. Garcia,
chief practice innovation officer at Thompson Hine LLP. "We're a precedentbased profession."
The legal industry would benefit from more collaboration and knowledge
sharing around legal innovation, Garcia says. AI seems particularly attuned
to the law. Firms are required to assemble, review, and analyze mountains
of opinions, court dockets, law review articles, and contracts. What once took
talented associates weeks and months to do can now be done in a matter
of hours and days by AI-driven research tools, cloud-based applications, and
supercomputers, and at a dramatically reduced cost.
AI's appeal rests in the novel ways it has introduced new processes and
enabling technologies to advance law firm methods and improve productivity.
It is a notion that is not lost on curious clients who see the value of AI-driven
applications in their personal and professional lives.
"Every day clients are dealing with AI tools in applications on their smartphones
or chatbots when shopping," Garcia says. "It seems logical that they would
come to expect the same level of advanced technology in their law firms and
their operations."
Greentarget, a Chicago consulting and business intelligence firm, speculated
in its 2018 Legal Industry Outlook that law firms that lag behind first-adopter
firms might pay the price. "Firms that don't keep up stand to lose work to
better-positioned competitors, alternative providers or in-house departments
that are [keeping up]," according to the report.

Washington Lawyer - November 2018

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