Ratcheting Expectations in the Age of GenAI
Generative AI (GenAI) is an emerging technology that can enhance legal professionals’ productivity, improve collaboration, and shape the future of legal work. In fact, our recent survey highlights a growing trend toward the adoption of GenAI technologies, with 42% of law firms already leveraging these tools and an additional 34% planning to integrate them within the next year.
Litera recently held a meeting in London where leaders in legal practice innovation gathered to connect on strategies for implementing GenAI, best practices, satisfying client expectations, and more.
We’re excited to share a recap of the panel discussion portion, exploring the transformative impact of GenAI on legal practices, focusing on its applications and benefits, as well as the evolving role of AI-powered tools in driving business value. Led by Richard Tromans of The Artificial Lawyer, the panel consisted of two in-house counsel from international corporations and a director of innovation from a large international law firm. Below are key takeaways from their discussion.
Streamlining Legal Processes
The integration of AI into legal workflows was a primary focus. AI tools, especially GenAI, are being utilized to automate and enhance various legal processes. GenAI helps legal teams improve productivity with respect to their contracting processes, document management, and regulatory and day-to-day queries, among other things, so they have more time to focus on higher value tasks. As GenAI technologies continue to evolve, legal teams will increasingly transition from being traditional service providers to becoming strategic business partners, in addition to gaining more flexibility in supporting additional business needs.
GenAI can also offer initial assessments that guide lawyers toward effective counsel in transactional legal work. One expert noted, “We are using AI as a bit of a sounding board . . . it is giving us enough to have a conversation and get going.” These initial insights serve as a starting point for deeper legal analysis, ensuring that legal teams can more easily and quickly facilitate strategic discussions. This combination of automation and expertise saves time, enhances accuracy, and fosters more meaningful attorney-client discussions.
Driving Efficiency and Collaboration
"We have been proactively engaging with our legal ops teams and law firms to discuss what they are seeing and what commands they are experimenting with."
AI is significantly improving efficiency and time management within legal teams. By automating routine tasks, lawyers can concentrate on more strategic and meaningful work. "Our main focus has been automating part of our contracting process to help our team review contracts quicker and get the simple things off their plate," explained another expert. This shift allows legal professionals to engage more deeply with the business and have more impactful conversations. This spirit of innovation extends beyond internal teams to partnerships with external law firms and tech providers.
By sharing AI-driven insights and tools, partnerships between in-house legal teams and their outside counsel and technology providers benefit from greater efficiency, more informed decision-making, and deeper client relationships. "We have been proactively engaging with our legal ops teams and law firms to discuss what they are seeing and what commands they are experimenting with," mentioned a panelist. These collaborative efforts not only enhance the strategic value delivered to clients but also drive innovation and adaptability within the legal industry.
Challenges and Adoption
Adopting AI in legal settings comes with its challenges. Legal teams often need to overcome a learning curve and gain comfort with the technology. One participant highlighted, "Lawyers are in a difficult position, not being experts in AI. It's about getting them comfortable and understanding that they don't have to figure it all out on their own." This underscores the importance of not only support and training in AI adoption, but also the criticality of ensuring that AI solutions solve real challenges that legal teams actually experience.
Data-Driven Approach
A data-driven approach is crucial for measuring the impact of AI. Establishing benchmarks and building metrics help in understanding the accuracy and effectiveness of AI tools. “We are trying to be really data-driven, establishing benchmarks of where we are and building metrics around it,” shared a participant.
While seeing greater than 80% accuracy in having GenAI review non-disclosure agreements, it was noted that “it requires a lot of human input still, but we are very comfortable with it at this point.” Accordingly, the combination of human review plus AI, rather than either one alone, ensures continuous improvement via fine-tuning of AI applications. This approach is not only limited to GenAI, but also applies to other types of AI solutions that are capable of being trained by legal teams.
The Future of Legal AI
Looking ahead, the integration of GenAI into legal workflows will continue to expand beyond administrative and repetitive tasks. Legal professionals are already beginning to explore more advanced applications, such as using AI for summarizing contract clauses and data points and collecting data and trends on deal terms from past transactions to support negotiation positions. "We hope AI becomes part of every lawyer's day-to-day, moving up the value chain and assisting in more complex tasks," predicted one of the speakers.
By using AI to generate insights and anticipate challenges even sooner, legal professionals can offer more impactful advice that aligns with the long-term goals of their clients and organizations. In this new landscape, legal expertise and business strategy will interlock more strongly, unlocking new opportunities for growth and innovation.
Law Firm / Client Partnership
The panel did not suggest that, as clients, they are demanding their law firms must use GenAI, but it is being strongly encouraged. Our panel were proactively engaging with legal ops teams in law firms to discuss ‘what tools are you using’? There is a lot of collaboration happening between law firms and their clients. The triangle of law firm, client and legal tech vendor is an important one. It is about clients saying ‘what can we do better’ and ‘sharing in cost savings’. Legal teams are encouraged to experiment with AI tools and explore new approaches to problem-solving, backed by leadership support and performance metrics that track AI’s effectiveness.
How Litera Can Help
Litera’s solutions for legal teams in transactional practices—Kira, Transact, and Dragon—are designed to revolutionize deal work and optimize client outcomes. Leveraging these solutions enables lawyers and legal professionals to:
- Focus on What Matters: Focus on higher-value work by automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks around document drafting and negotiation, due diligence contract review, and transaction management.
- Reduce Legal Risks in Deals: Mitigate the risk of reputational damage resulting from uninformed decision-making, missing critical contractual language during due diligence and similar reviews, and errors in document tracking and data entry in managing corporate transactions.
- Provide More Client Value: Enhance client value through more accurate insights based on your firm’s experience, the ability to provide comprehensive, data-driven advice, and more transparent and collaborative transaction management.
To learn more about our innovative solutions for transactional legal teams, schedule a demo with one of our experts today.
