How legal leaders are leveraging AI technologies to drive digital transformation and build their own Legal 2.0
OpenText and Corporate Counsel Business Journal conducted a research study surveying corporate law departments. The survey confirmed that general counsel and chief legal officers are beginning to explore ways to use AI to meet departmental
and organizational priorities, support key activities, and automate corporate legal department workflows and tasks. At the same time, study respondents also expressed reservations about implementing new forms of AI, such as generative AI and large language models.
The responses to the survey further demonstrate that enterprise legal is increasingly looking to their chief information officer (CIO) partners for expertise and guidance on delivering legal department innovation strategy. This partnership is critical to supporting initiatives to optimize operations, make smarter data-driven decisions, reduce costs, and manage risks.
Evolving Expectations for AI
Faced with rapid change and escalating complexity, enterprise corporate counsel are increasingly interested in the potential of AI to alleviate corporate legal challenges and improve outcomes.
The survey confirmed that the top three reasons corporate legal departments are looking to AI technologies are to:
- 54% - Free up time to allow them to focus on high-value legal work
- 52% - Improve decision making
- 48% - Improve legal department productivity
Application of generative AI
Many corporate legal leaders are planning to apply generative AI to their work activities. Among the most cited use cases were:
- 42% - Document summarization
- 41% - Legal research
- 36% - Compliance monitoring
- 31% - Contract drafting and risk mitigation
Regarding eDiscovery specific tasks, respondents indicated that they were most comfortable using generative AI for a variety of different tasks including:
- 41% - Creating summaries/narratives to educate reviewers on case details
- 34% - Locating documents for issue review
- 33% - Prioritizing document review and case strategy
Implementation of generative AI
While legal department interest in generative AI is rising rapidly, wholesale adoption and implementation of generative AI and large language models appears to be further out on the horizon. The survey indicated that concerns about ethical and legal issues (e.g., misuse and bias) (68%) as well as reliability of results and poor quality (59%) are likely factors in a desire to proceed with caution.
In fact, organizations who are considering implementation of AI are generally in the very early stages of its exploration and validation of technology.
When asked where their organization stands regarding generative AI, respondents responded as follows:
- 25% - None of the above: 25% have not started their generative AI journey
- 37% - Exploration & Assessment: 37% are exploring the potential of AI and evaluating its relevance
- 25% - Piloting & Validation: 25% are initiating pilot projects to validate AI's effectiveness in specific areas
- 9% - Integration & Implementation: 9% are deploying AI solutions and integrating them into existing systems and processes
- 4% - Optimization & Scaling: 4% are maximizing AI's impact and expanding its usage across the organization
Timeline for roll out
Since generative AI is in its nascent stage, departmental roll out is likely to take some time. Our survey confirmed these findings.
What is your time frame to roll out generative AI usage?
- 5.24% - Already using on a wide-scale basis
- 11.79% - Within the next 6 months
- 13.54% - In 6-12 months
- 13.10% - In 1-3 years
- 47.16% - Not sure/No timeline set
- 9.17% - NA
Conclusion
Forward-thinking lawyers are already creating high-performance, highly flexible legal departments. With AI, they can see a path to a nimbler organization that will further optimize workflow, enhance decision-making, and improve departmental productivity—especially by automating and simplifying time-consuming, manual processes.
While the exact timelines for full scale implementation remains uncertain, and there are many issues and concerns still to be addressed, planning is already underway or being piloted by the most innovative legal teams seeking to thrive in the digital age.
Published March 21, 2024.