Navigating how and where to use AI at a law firm can feel like a monumental exercise, often tasked to the members of an AI committee/ task force.
It hasn’t just been a case of keeping track of the technology’s increasing abilities, but also security considerations, ethical concerns, change management, shifting from billable hour pricing, and vendor assessment to name but a few.
In the 12 months following ChatGPT’s release there were many fundamental questions around if/ how the technology could (ever) be used safely.
We’ve passed that moment now - it’s possible to use affordable, flexible AI platforms in a dedicated, secure environment for your firm.
What most AI task forces focus on next is what use cases the firm should be tackling which can lead to yet more research, deliberation and rabbit holes.
Our advice: follow the money.
Win new business using AI
In the minds of clients, AI has arrived in the legal sector.
Many are already beginning to expect that the efficiencies that AI can bring to legal work will be passed onto them in terms of lower legal fees.
If it hasn’t happened already, partners in your firm will lose RFPs to other law firms incorporating AI into how they deliver work better/ faster/ cheaper than those relying only on human lawyers or pre-GPT 3.5 technology.
Missing out on large projects hurts the top line and the remuneration of fee earners.
In our experience, this is much more painful than not having a tool to help search through previous precedencies and compare them to other similar cases (for example).
Therefore once you cover the table stakes of giving employees a secure way to be assisted by AI, focus on working with forward-thinking leaders in the organisation who care about winning more business for the firm.
Work backwards from the press release
It can be hard to tread the line between what would be valuable clients and the team and what is technically possible.
Often this results in non-technical people prematurely “solutionising” a problem statement either killing off ideas, or not digging to the root of what would be valuable.
The best antidote we’ve found for this is to adopt the Amazon internal press release exercise.
In short:
Write the press release you want your ideal clients to read
Work backwards from the title [COMPANY] ANNOUNCES [SERVICE | TECHNOLOGY | TOOL] TO ENABLE [CUSTOMER SEGMENT] TO [BENEFIT STATEMENT] WITH AI-ENABLED SOLUTION
This will help you articulate exactly what the value is to clients in your (projected) use of AI, rather than focusing on areas in the firm where AI could be used, but wouldn’t actually translate to much tangible value.
It’s much easier to get feedback on a (hypothetical) press release than it is to run rounds of problem statements, use case discovery sessions and money spent on developing early prototypes.
Move quickly before others do
Once you/ your legal AI partner have found an area that your firm is particularly well placed to execute on, then it’s time to make it a reality.
Note that you’re selling the outcome, and so it might “just” be that you’re now incorporating a smart use of AI into part of the overall process by which you deliver your work for clients. We see AI best placed to augment the work of lawyers, rather than (just) assist or automate them.
A typical way that Curvestone works with clients in this way is to help them win business that involves large amounts of contract/ document analysis e.g. how their clients will be affected by a change in regulation.
- Refine “the press release”: bring in technical expertise to ensure that the client outcome can be delivered in a timely manner
- Map out the process: work with Legal Ops on where to plug in our AI modules, training where appropriate
- Do test runs: work with subset of lawyers to ensure the workflow works
- Monitor and evaluate: ensure that the workflow
In the case of analysing how clients are affected by a change in regulation, this means augmenting the work of junior lawyers reviewing and surfacing important information from client contracts (e.g. using our document abstraction module), and then using other tools to help analyse this information so that senior lawyers can give their overall recommendations better/ faster/ cheaper.
Projects like this can typically be set up and ready to go in a matter of weeks.
Second order benefits to moving quickly
As we’ve said elsewhere, we see the Modify path being the most prudent path for law firms to take at this relatively early stage of the industry’s relationship with AI.Having a partner (like Curvestone) who can create solutions for our partners 10x faster/ cheaper than building in-house means they can experiment with the technology and find where it has the best fit.
This also has other advantages in regards to “following the money”:
- Get mindshare from your clients: “Law Firm does X with AI” will be passé before too long. If you’re genuinely well-placed to deliver a service better/ faster/ cheaper through a combination of your in-house expertise + AI then you can reap the benefits of being the one clients associate with it before your competitors do so
- Test out in a proposal: as an extension of the press release, go through the process of writing how/ where you’ll be using AI in your next RFP. It’ll force you to articulate the value to client in doing so, and identify any internal resistance (e.g. policies needing to be written)
- Try, and try again: if the first one doesn’t land, then you’ll no doubt learn reasons why that can improve the next project. Every law firm is figuring out how to use AI, and so the more you learn, the more you can stay ahead. You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket
Conclusion
It can be easy to spend time in AI task force meetings mapping out requirements, asking lawyers to come up with where they have problems and then deliberating if/ where AI can help them.
In our view, tools that will allow lawyers to ask questions and give prompts for AI to then generate an answer will be commonplace.
In order to win more business you need to be willing and able to do things that other firms can’t, and for most firms, the emergence of AI presents a limited window of opportunity to do things others can’t, especially if you partner with an organisation who can get you there 10x faster/ cheaper than going it alone.
If you’d like to speak with us about how we could help your firm create a first-to-market solution for clients, or help you include AI in your next RFP, then feel free to book a call with us here.
