It’s safe to say that if your workplace isn’t adopting AI, then the competition is doing so while racing ahead. Even in the legal field where racking up billable hours is the name of the game, attorneys are embracing these productivity tools, although they must do so with extreme caution because any slip-up can cost clients their cases.
AI snafus can also lead to professional legal shaming. That’s precisely what went down in an Alabama federal district court, where a judge disqualified attorneys over an embarrassing failure to check citations after AI hallucinated fake cases while drafting a brief. That mess prompted Lee Meier partner Cary Burke to drop a “bless your heart” on LinkedIn, a move that surely struck lasting fear into the hearts of law firms everywhere.
Talk about a cautionary tale. What other pressing concerns exist? A pair of surveys shine some light on what’s up there:
- The National Law Review recently published results that suggested why firms are hesitant to adopt AI for several reasons, including concerns over data privacy and client confidentiality. Many justifiable worries about AI’s accuracy and reliability also exist, and attorneys must always fact-check AI output with a fine-toothed comb.
- Thomson Reuters unveiled another survey that revealed how 72% of respondents “view AI as a force for good in their profession.” So, it’s clear that the legal community is embracing AI and realizes how much this tech can bolster efficiency for routine tasks like document review, summarizing documents, and legal research. Additionally, “59% use it to draft briefs or memos,” which can save hours of work that can better be spent on tasks requiring more critical thinking and nuance.
Law firms’ monetary investment in AI is another area to watch in predicting how much firms will use AI in the future, and a new Bloomberg column rounds up how Big Law is spending in this field. Spoiler Alert: It’s a lot less than you’d suspect, but the amount is forecast to grow by 2027.
Currently, firms are using discounted trial offers and pilots to pay about $50–$350 per attorney, or about 0.5% of firm revenue, on AI tools like Harvey and Lex Machina. Once those deals expire, expenditures would potentially skyrocket, even though right now, “AI is a big deal but not yet a big cost,” so we can expect firms to eventually become more selective on which tools give the most bang for their buck.
In other words, Big Law is waiting for the dust to settle on these emerging platforms as they feel out which ones will work best for them and which will ultimately survive. Additionally, this is a realm where new legal precedent can emerge overnight. Are the AI tools in question going to be updated accordingly as these changes happen? That certainly isn’t something that, say, ChatGPT can pull off… yet, but for more sophisticated tools used by law firms? We shall see. Stay tuned for more evolving AI times.
