For many litigators, legal research remains one of the most tedious aspects of practicing law. From not knowing whether you’ve exhausted your search to consuming large chunks of time, research can be draining in terms of time and finances—many clients just aren’t willing to pay hefty legal research bills.
Sluggish legal research continues to weigh lawyers down, despite the fact that we live in the age of Google and Alexa. If technology gives us the ability to have any question answered in seconds, why can’t we find the case law we need just as easily?
While this has been the case for decades, there’s been an evolutionary shift in the last few years due to an innovative few leveraging modern AI to make legal practice more efficient. Advanced AI has been used to bring forth what many see as a technological revolution in practice of law.
The “modern AI” behind new, intelligent legal tech includes machine learning (a branch of AI) and other sophisticated technologies. Rather than delve into the mechanics here, it’s more useful for litigators to know how this technology drives efficiency in a law practice, so they can stop fearing AI-powered legal tech and instead reap its benefits.
- Smarter Legal Research
AI-powered search engines allow lawyers to conduct concept-based searches of legal databases, instead of trying to find the perfect keywords or Boolean operators. This gives lawyers the power to research quickly and intuitively by searching how they think. Lawyers can research faster and find cases they wouldn’t have found using traditional search platforms.
- Knowledge Management
This concept-based searching also applies to searching a law firm’s brief bank. This means lawyers can search a concept and find a brief they’ve already written with similar issues and arguments, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
- Expedited Brief Drafting
Certain litigation tasks can be automated through AI, including brief-drafting. Smart tools can even help lawyers write the first draft of their brief in less than 30 minutes.
- Organized Discovery
Concept-based searching comes into play here, too. Searching by concepts allows lawyers to find exactly what they are looking for in millions of documents. Basically, AI actually finds the needle in the haystack, and does so instantly.
