In the past year, the legal industry has transformed to adopt technology and artificial intelligence (AI). In a recent survey, 47% of lawyers believed that generative AI and machine learning would significantly alter how the law is practiced.
Every law firm wants to grow, increase its client base, and manage cases more efficiently. AI could be the key to providing quality legal services, improving client outreach, and automating mundane administrative tasks that are otherwise time-consuming. In this article, we’ll look into four ways AI can help attorneys and law firms streamline their business operations and overall performance.
Efficient Case Management
Scheduling and tracking cases manually can take up a lot of time and cause lawyers to miss deadlines, which ultimately means unsatisfied clients and bad case outcomes. AI can help a law firm design and update schedules automatically and help create reminders for courts and meetings. It can also help manage administrative tasks like filings, settlement negotiations, and updating case status. With these features, lawyers can manage their firm seamlessly and focus more on their law practice instead of being caught up in scheduling.
Legal Research and Document Review
Legal research is one of the most important aspects before and during a case. Lawyers need to understand the case, potential laws that apply, evidence, and similar cases before formulating an argument to support their client, a process that can be very time-consuming. AI can make this workflow more streamlined and efficient.
AI-powered legal tools can skim through vast legal databases, identify relevant case law, statutes, and regulations, and provide insights to attorneys on how to approach the case. That way, lawyers can stay up-to-date with the newest legal developments and understand unfamiliar or complex legal concepts more quickly. That frees up time for them to strategize adequately before the case proceedings begin and improve their case victory statistics.
AI can also assist in creating summaries of legal proceedings and all essential legal documents for a court case, saving up the time it would take to file those documents manually. Machine learning algorithms can also use an existing template that your firm operates and learn how to generate new documents based on case-specific information. That way, your documents will be consistent, accurate, and comply with legal standards.
Predictive Analytics and Risk Assessment
AI can use predictive analytics to determine the potential outcome of cases beforehand, which can help law firms decide whether they wish to take on a high-stakes case. Predictive analytics tools process data from previous proceedings to identify patterns and trends relevant to the new case. The type of data that these algorithms analyze includes the type of case, the client’s demographics, and their past behavior. Not only does this help firms decide whether they should take on a case, but it is also valuable in litigation, where attorneys can identify potential legal challenges early on and have a higher chance of overcoming them.
Law firms can also leverage predictive analytics to attract new clients. Previous case data can help attorneys identify potential new clients they would want to take, allowing the law firm to tailor their marketing strategy to attract them. This will give them an edge over their competition as they can target those potential clients in a more data-driven way.
Client Communication
AI-powered communication tools can also help legal teams improve their communication with clients. Chatbots and virtual assistants can handle client inquiries, schedule appointments, and provide updates on case status. Chatbots are available 24/7, so clients will no longer have to wait for their lawyer to be available for an update on the case. That means there will be better customer service, client satisfaction levels, and more overall trust in the law firm.
AI-powered virtual assistants can also summarize client meetings and transcribe detailed notes for the lawyer’s and client’s future reference. That way, attorneys can quickly review them to get back on track for a case if they forget or are swamped with many cases simultaneously.
Endnote
As the legal world evolves with technology, AI can help provide better-quality legal services than before. It can aid the legal industry in many other ways, such as data security and compliance, better decision-making, billing, time tracking, contract review, and firm marketing. AI can lead to increased efficiency, improved accuracy, and enhanced client services from law firms, giving them a competitive edge over other law firms when attracting new clients.
However, it’s important to remember that AI is no replacement for human communication and legal advice. Whereas it can be powerful as an assistant to the legal process, it should not become a shortcut for lawyers to increase the number of cases they take on. Instead, they should leverage AI to better prepare for the outcomes and enhance the quality of the proceedings of their existing cases.
