Introduction – Why AI is a Game-Changer
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the legal industry, dramatically increasing efficiency and productivity, allowing firms to better support their clients. With the right tools, attorneys can provide faster, more comprehensive services while maintaining their crucial role as strategic advisors and advocates. At its core, AI speeds up work, putting facts at the tip of your fingers, helping legal teams work smarter. But it’s important to treat AI not as an automation, not as a replacement for legal work – but as a new way to perform work.
Challenges in Adopting New Technology
Adopting new AI technology into a legal practice isn’t like replacing an existing set of software tools. It’s not a small percentage improvement for a current process, it’s a whole new way of tackling legal work. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the new approach, so it’s crucial to keep asking “Can AI make this faster”, making sure not to fall back into the “old way” of doing things – losing the edge AI could give you. Using AI consistently and well requires intentional effort and a willingness to explore new approaches in legal work. But we believe that by embracing this technology and adapting our workflows, we can provide faster, more comprehensive services to our clients.
Importance of Trust in AI Adoption for Lawyers
The first step to bringing AI to your firm is to find a provider and a technology that you trust. Building trust was crucial for us and will be very important for any firm adopting AI technology. With horror stories in the news, there is understandable hesitancy – the risks of poor AI usage are significant. Hallucination and other AI mistakes can be very costly for a firm. For us, it was crucial to find a tool that allowed our users to trace back information and verify facts easily. Our AI provider, Eve Legal, built trust by making sure that AI responses are easily verifiable – and making sure that we worked closely across teams to minimize the risks of errors.
Adopting AI Ethically
Adopting new technology ethically was one of our top priorities. Ethical AI adoption in law means that AI should never be a replacement for attorney judgment, but instead be a tool for brainstorming, summarization, and drafting. We, as lawyers, must maintain our ethical obligation to verify all information and citations produced by AI, just as we would with any other source. Ultimately, it’s crucial that we continue practicing law ourselves, relying on our own expertise for strategy and final decisions rather than deferring to AI.
Adopting AI Responsibly
Creating a comprehensive Responsible AI Use Policy is critical early in the adoption process. This policy helps staff understand the importance and potential consequences of AI usage, ensuring responsible and ethical implementation across the firm. We make this policy a part of our employment terms, requiring all team members to read and sign it before using any AI tools. This policy outlines how employees are expected to use AI, what risks they need to consider, gives them a clear understanding of how they should talk about usage with clients, and defines clear consequences for the mis-use of this technology. To read more about how to write a Responsible AI Use Policy for your firm, click here. To download a template you can use for your firm, click here.
By establishing clear guidelines, we aim to foster trust in AI technology while maintaining our commitment to ethical legal practice.
Adopting AI Thoroughly
Implementing AI effectively requires a focused and intentional approach. We avoid overwhelming our staff with too many options, instead carefully selecting and introducing AI tools that align with our firm’s needs. From there, we conduct regular training and provide ongoing support. This is crucial to ensure all team members understand how to leverage AI in their daily work.
As mentioned above, we encourage our staff to consistently ask themselves, “How can I use AI to help me with this task?” to foster a culture of innovation and efficiency. This sets us on a path to seamlessly integrate AI into our practice, transforming into an AI-Native law firm, and, most importantly, maintaining our commitment to upholding justice for workers.
Future Outlook for AI in Law Firms
AI adoption in the legal sector will accelerate rapidly, despite the industry’s typical lag in embracing new technologies. We anticipate that large defense firms will likely make significant investments in AI, extending the advantage they have. For plaintiff-side firms like ours, it’s crucial to embrace AI technology to effectively represent our clients and remain competitive in the evolving legal landscape. Ultimately, we see AI as a transformative tool that will reshape legal practice, requiring firms to adapt and innovate to best serve their clients and we’re excited to be at the forefront of this innovation.
