Too much information, too little time

Every year globally, millions of documents pass through the hands of lawyers to build cases for their clients and this only grows over time. According to the Future Ready Lawyer’s Survey which interviewed 700 lawyers across the world, over 72% struggle with the increasing volume and complexity of document processing and want to focus on efficiency and productivity. The legal business is on the brink of information overload.

Costly operations and costing opportunities

Multiple functions within a law firm require high volumes of information access. More often than not, these functions are mechanical and repetitive requiring lawyers to go back and forth in searching, asking and validating information versus spending time with their clients or building the case. This translates to high running costs and reduced transaction rates as a business.

Artificial intelligence is reducing the mechanical rigor in the business of law globally. Here are 3 ways law firms can consider applying artificial intelligence in their business today.

A legally-trained search engine sifting across various knowledge bases

Documents sit across domains, in emails, sharepoints and data servers. Whether performing research for a litigation case, or locating the right precedent for a corporate matter, hunting for the right set of documents is a time-consuming exercise, especially for the uninitiated. Through integrating different knowledge bases, automatically tagging documents and providing a user-friendly search interface, natural language understanding artificial intelligence can do the heavy lifting and hone in on the right set of documents. Useful views like domain filters, document relationship maps and owners’ contacts also provide lawyers with proper context and expedite the decision making process.

An AI paralegal to extract and translate information accurately

Processing documents is highly labour and cost intensive because of the technical complexity of practicing law as well as the various different document types involved. Training artificial intelligence to identify, extract and validate the right documents and information at speed would dramatically reduce the manpower time cost, allowing lawyers to have more time with clients and build their cases.

A law-smart virtual assistant as the interface for global collaboration or 24/7 client service

Today’s knowledge driven companies like banks and hotels use chatbots on a daily basis to serve their customers and virtual assistants are smarter than ever before. They provide not only information but recommendations on a course of action based on understanding the conversation it just had.

With knowledge stored in cloud, lawyers can participate in a multi-chat via a ‘Lawbot’ to access information and collaborate anytime, anywhere in the world, creating organisational scalability critical for global law firms. The virtual assistant can also interact with clients, answering common general legal queries that don’t involve a specific factual matrix.

In rethinking how lawyers search and process information through technology, law firms today can create a more collaborative and productive practice that will better poise their firms for success.