Law Firms and GenAI: Threat Or Opportunity?

What it takes for GenAI to be embraced by legal professionals

There’s much hype among business leaders surrounding generative AI (GenAI) since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT at the end of 2022, especially regarding how the technology can improve efficiencies and reduce costs. Despite clear benefits, adoption in some areas of the legal industry won’t happen overnight, particularly among law firms. It will likely remain a subject of discourse for some time, even if most firm attorneys are cautiously (and privately) optimistic about the benefits.

GenAI can help law firms in core and administrative functions, increasing efficiency in tasks like document and contract creation, generating summaries, knowledge management, and much more. Because of the advantage now available, law firms over the next 10 years will need to determine where and how best to integrate GenAI in order to remain competitive while also navigating ethical, cultural and technological challenges inherent to law firms. 

 

Law Firms Should Approach GenAI as an Opportunity, Not a Threat

Lawyers are conservative by nature and necessity, and not typically “early adopters” of new technology. Law firms won’t fully adopt GenAI until attorneys believe that risk is relatively low and that incorporating GenAI technology enhances their obligation to zealously advocate for their clients.

Three specific cultural factors are responsible for the slow rate of technology adoption:
 

1. Senior leadership is less inclined to adopt new technologies or alter established best practices.
2. The standard partnership model prioritizes profit distribution to partners over core services, leaving little room for investment in new technologies.
3. Firms typically need more mature governance capabilities for rapid technology adoption because of the lawyer’s obligations to safeguard client data and other ethical rules that govern how attorneys create work products for their clients.

Given these constraints, GenAI will likely be initially deployed by trusted and established legal research platforms, such as Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg. These platforms offer a safe application of genAI with immediate benefit. First, firms already subscribe to these applications to gain access to their highly curated databases of law and legal precedent.  Secondly, leveraging a large language model (LLM) does not necessarily involve exposure of client data. Lastly, attorneys are already accustomed to relying on these platforms for natural language searching, case synthesis and precedent-validation.  

Once relevant use cases have been identified and successfully rolled out, firms can consider additional AI deployments to automate and optimize operations. The need for better data hygiene practices will remain a significant challenge, which attorneys will want to consider today to prepare for GenAI’s widespread adoption.

Considerations for Assessing and Implementing GenAI

When evaluating GenAI viability, there are several points of risk and concern that should be considered. Firms must assess whether the technology can positively enhance the lawyer’s representation of their client without creating any risk to the client’s matter (thereby creating a malpractice risk for the attorney). Effective risk management is critical to building the business case for implementation and successful risk mitigation relies on well-defined operational objectives and a clear grasp of genAI capabilities.

Additionally, when a firm decides to implement any GenAI solution, it should adopt a rigorous vetting process that separates the reality and risks from the claims of enthusiastic technology developers and industry pundits.  The unfortunate reality is that the type of rigor necessary to fully validate the efficacy of GenAI burns two precious resources within a firm: time and money. It is crucial for anyone looking to implement technology within a law firm to have a plan to overcome the formidable cultural resistance they are likely to encounter.  

Any successful change management plan within a firm will need to involve key stakeholders, such as firm counsel, leadership, innovation counsel and teams, seasoned legal technologists (such as eDiscovery professionals or knowledge management professionals), and chief information officers. 

Legal Industry Adoption is a Matter of Time

While GenAI is expected to be ubiquitous in five years, for the legal industry the timeframe is more protracted, closer to 10- 15 years. For comparison’s sake, the complete transition from using printed books to online legal research databases took firms close to a decade.

GenAI’s role in litigation is a bit more complex because, in addition to lawyers considering how the use of GenAI impacts their obligations to their clients, litigators must also consider the court’s perspectives and how their adversaries may attempt to challenge their methodology.  Litigators will need to get comfortable with the science behind GenAI technologies in the face of potential scrutiny, challenge, and unfavorable judicial rulings while industry standards and guidance from the courts evolve.

Remain Open Minded, Yet Vigilant 

Lawyers will only shift the way they approach legal tech when reputable organizations can demonstrate a comprehensive testing and validation process and only after firms can establish “best practices” for safe use.  Given the speed of innovation and adoption, law firms need to remain open to this inevitable change in the way they operate and service clients while also remaining steadfast in mitigating risk.

Philip Goodin Heads Integreon’s Litigation Services business unit that includes solutions for document review and subpoena and law enforcement compliance. He brings 20+ years of experience in the legal industry. He is also a part-time adjunct professor of law, legal/litigation operations and eDiscovery at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.