Leverage New Gen AI Instruments

In our persevering with sequence, we focus on what steps small legislation agency leaders can take to leverage new Gen AI instruments and processes and ship extra worth to purchasers extra rapidly.

What Can a Small Legislation Agency Do, Proper Now, to Leverage Gen AI?

Let’s begin with what the agency doesn’t have to do: It doesn’t want to rent knowledge scientists or flip its attorneys into AI specialists. For smaller legislation corporations, as for many corporations throughout the spectrum, Gen AI applied sciences will more and more be embedded within the merchandise they use. If a agency deploys these merchandise successfully, it’s deploying AI.

Like every implementation of recent instruments and expertise, nonetheless, this does require some measure of technique and forethought. Even the smallest of corporations want a time-bound strategic plan executed with testing and studying throughout the agency.

A part of that strategic planning course of will embrace figuring out ache factors within the present means of doing issues. One space that could be low-hanging fruit for smaller corporations is in advertising and marketing and enterprise improvement — easy weblog posts and web site creation will be facilitated extra simply with Gen AI, for instance — in addition to different areas the place administrative work takes an excessive amount of time and sources.

Our current research, Chat GPT & Generative AI Inside Legislation Companies, gives a highway map. Basically, the survey discovered that whereas legislation agency attorneys are usually open to utilizing Gen AI, there’s appreciable skepticism about leveraging AI in core authorized work.

Respondents felt barely higher, nonetheless, about utilizing Gen AI instruments, such because the public-facing Chat GPT, for non-legal work inside a legislation agency, akin to primary question-and-answer companies or different administrative duties. Virtually three-fourths (72%) of respondents mentioned they felt that Gen AI must be utilized to non-legal work inside a agency — a a lot increased proportion than those that mentioned they felt it must be utilized to authorized work throughout the agency, 21 proportion factors increased, in actual fact.

If a small legislation agency is on the lookout for locations to get began with Gen AI, there are some examples during which a strategic method can convey fast, but actual transformation to each the enterprise and follow of legislation throughout the agency.

Turning Administrative Duties Into Strategic Benefit

Environment friendly deployment of software program to reinforce the executive facet of working a legislation agency can shift the dialogue from effectivity to strategic benefit. Gen AI-based instruments can flip back-office duties into autos for added strategic perception, higher shopper relations and, finally, increased revenues.

Some key first steps that agency leaders might take embrace:

Evaluate objectives, processes and instruments for shopper communications. Are the agency’s groups in a position to produce well timed, correct and interesting shopper communications? Might its attorneys generally be higher communicators? Gen AI will considerably influence the effort and time required to generate first drafts of communications. Consider this as a chance to revisit the agency’s objectives and techniques for higher shopper communications and to leverage experience that’s at the moment locked away in inner paperwork and work product.
Discover new methods to offer extra responsive shopper service. Gen AI is behind many merchandise (akin to chatbots) that supply organizations new methods to reply rapidly to purchasers about their issues and billing and take away a few of the friction from routine shopper inquiries.
Assess markets and determine enterprise alternatives. AI additionally has grow to be important for transactional attorneys by enabling them to evaluate prevailing market phrases whereas advising purchasers. Those self same strategies can be utilized to grasp broader market traits and determine market alternatives by monitoring the route during which the market is shifting.

Accelerating and Enhancing the High quality of Authorized Work

As attorneys construct familiarity with Gen AI by its utility to administrative duties, and because the instruments proceed to evolve, the stage shall be set for the appliance of Gen AI past the enterprise of legislation and into the follow of legislation. Certainly, Gen AI has the potential to rework the substantive authorized work on the coronary heart of a legislation agency’s worth to purchasers, with a variety of potential functions and benefits, together with:

Authorized analysis. Sustain with the dramatic enhancements that Gen AI is bringing to authorized analysis instruments. AI has been embedded in authorized analysis instruments for years, however a brand new era of AI capabilities will dramatically alter the analysis expertise for attorneys. Central to these modifications is the power to ask questions in conversational dialogue with analysis companies and arrive at synthesized solutions somewhat than simply lists of related paperwork. Staying on high of the newest options of authorized analysis platforms will present a strategic benefit for small legislation corporations towards opponents of all sizes, permitting solo and smaller corporations to meaningfully stage the taking part in discipline.
Drafting. Combine Gen AI instruments throughout the drafting course of and leverage a agency’s work product. Gen AI techniques can improve the method of drafting, however additionally they present a chance to extend the worth of a agency’s personal requirements and precedents. AI-based drafting instruments can routinely pull most popular doc language from exterior content material sources or a agency’s proprietary paperwork.
Doc evaluation. Make AI a part of the agency’s doc evaluation processes. AI has confirmed to be an efficient technique to help attorneys with first-pass evaluation of paperwork akin to contracts or leases. Gen AI options will make these processes extra like conversational dialogue with the paperwork and can spare attorneys from the extra routine elements of the job to as a substitute use their time to deal with evaluation and shopper consultations.
Unleash higher service and productiveness. Leverage integrations amongst these instruments to attain higher high quality of service and productiveness. Gen AI will weave collectively the analysis, data administration, and drafting processes that at the moment are separate processes that require attorneys to shift out and in of various instruments. Companies can profit by analyzing and transforming their inner workflows to reap the benefits of these shifts and by altering processes or altering who does what work.

Shifting Boldly Towards an AI Future

There isn’t any cause for small legislation corporations to be intimidated by AI. None of those improvements are out of the attain of the standard small agency, and these corporations usually have the benefit of having the ability to redeploy sources and alter route extra rapidly than their bigger counterparts. Being nimble requires self-discipline, nonetheless, and all legislation corporations have to take a strategic method.

As we mentioned earlier on this sequence, AI has already made many essential impacts in how attorneys do their work. Gen AI will add essential parts to the combo, not the least of which is added capability for attorneys and the potential to extend the looks of professionalism within the eyes of purchasers. This new era of Gen AI instruments will draw upon knowledge, expertise and experience to provide high quality outcomes, and attorneys in small legislation corporations are simply as effectively positioned as their bigger agency counterparts so as to add their very own distinctive area experience to that equation.

Bigger legislation corporations which can be experimenting with Gen AI have usually spoken about how their first forays into this new world of AI tech will deal with inner duties, trying to experiment and iterate out of view of the shopper, whereas searching for to develop ranges of experience that may then be leveraged to the shopper’s benefit. Small legislation corporations can undertake the very same course of, and in reality, might even beat their bigger opponents to significant outcomes because of their agility and already less complicated processes.

Nobody is aware of for certain what the way forward for Gen AI will appear to be. Nevertheless, for small legislation agency leaders who’re keen to take daring however clever steps, a shiny future might come into focus rapidly.

That is the third in a sequence of weblog posts about how small legislation corporations can handle the alternatives and pitfalls introduced by generative synthetic intelligence.

Learn half one of many “Generative AI and the Small Legislation Agency” sequence right here.