You need only scan the current legal news cycle to see that the industry is abuzz with anticipation for AI transformation. But while the majority of firms are intent on incorporating AI into their businesses, by and large the most crucial part is still missing: implementation.
The Law Gazette reported recently that in a survey of law firm leaders 73% agreed that firms should integrate AI to get ahead by 2025, but only 53% said they planned to implement it. Various other reports, including research by business services provider Intapp, indicate that the vast majority of law firms are not investing in technology fast enough to meet accelerating client demands.
All the signs are suggesting that the AI-fuelled excitement is certainly there in the legal sector, but that it’s yet to be followed by wide-scale execution. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for this, but there may a familiar problem at play here: many firms are ready to innovate with AI but, as is the case in so many industries, aren’t sure how best to use it yet.
The reality is that there is an array of pain points that can be resolved with new technology: document tagging, contract analysis, dynamic pricing, due diligence, and small claims processing are just some of the time-consuming tasks that could be streamlined with the right AI-powered solution. Many of these tasks are more time-consuming than they need to be. In-house legal departments spend up to 50% of their time renewing contracts as basic as a Non-Disclosure Agreement – these are surely lawyer hours that could be better spent providing clients with great service.
Going beyond task automation, firms have the opportunity to adopt decision-making platforms with the capacity to reason in the way that a human does. Basing their logic on theoretical human logic rather than large datasets, these systems are able to make personalised recommendations and provide insights for customers tailored to their legal circumstance, taking into account a multitude of factors.
It’s in this area that Rainbird is currently collaborating with Taylor Wessing. To build a system capable of assessing how each client is affected by different parts of the Modern Slavery Act, we sat down with Taylor Wessing’s top specialists to encode their expertise into a Rainbird model. The result is a self-service tool that automates a previously time- and resource-consuming assessment process, freeing up Taylor Wessing’s lawyers to focus on higher value services for their clients.