For the legal function of large organisations it presents an opportunity to expand capability, to focus precious human resource on difficult, high value problems and to realise previously-hidden commercial opportunity.
But it also demands we answer some fairly big questions – about ethics, intellectual property rights, the systematisation of human bias and what the legal and moral limits of automation should be.
These are old questions, but things are moving fast.
Alastair Morrison, who is in charge of client strategy at Pinsent Masons, said that AI has the potential to expand the capabilities of forward-thinking legal functions.
I can see applications for this for projects that you don’t have the time or resource to do, like putting improved risk management processes in place that give you institutional integrity and resilience,” said Morrison.
AI before GPT
AI systems can already do a lot in the legal field, such as predict trial outcomes and judges’ rulings extremely accurately. According to Lucy Shurwood of Pinsent Masons, who’s been working on using technology to deliver legal services for over a decade, systems can now extract precise information from contracts quickly and easily.
“It is making it easier to extract the relevant information from a contract so that it can be reviewed and evaluated. This works for anything to do with contractual terms. The key terms that a client might be interested are ‘when can I terminate the agreement?’; ‘what’s the governing law of the agreement?’; ‘if I want to transfer the contract, can I do that? Are there any conditions?’. It generally arises in an M&A transaction or is driven by regulatory change that a company has to comply with. That’s when they need to understand what the contractual position is in a very large number of contracts. So it’s about being able to extract information really efficiently and support decision making,” she said.
