Posted by Stu White, product & engineering director at Legal Futures Associate Access Legal
White: GenAI will boost productivity and communication
Like many people, when ChatGPT launched in 2022, I was in awe of its capability. The speed with which it could turn both simple and complex queries into meaningful responses in seconds, made me realise that this was the beginning of a dynamic shift in the way business works.
I could already envision how GenAI (or generative AI) would completely transform how people collaborate, communicate and navigate their workflows – and it was easy to see how this could translate to any form of desk-based work.
Fast forward two years and much of my focus has been on how we make GenAI work for the legal sector. Like for many firms right now, it was a case of thinking: where do we start? The capability of AI and the possibilities of what it can change for the way law firms practise, comply and the time it can free up to counsel, takes you in all directions.
But as with any transformative technology, it’s about picking the right place to start – a place that’s going to have a major impact while, arguably even more importantly for the legal sector, re-assure law firm leaders and practitioners that it’s safe.
And AI is secure – if security and innovation are paired together.
As a team, we have spent a lot of time discussing AI with a lot of our customers, from law firm leaders to lawyers and other key figures right across the legal market. The crux of all conversations with them has been: “how can this technology support greater practice and client service without compromising security?”
GenAI is for collaboration and productivity
Naturally this led us to case management. Case management software has always been at the heart of how law firms operate, ensuring that the management of tasks, matters, billings and communication (internally and with clients), all integrate with each other and the wider business functions.
Case management software like Access Legal Proclaim and Access Legal Case Management, are already powerful systems, but AI (and more specifically GenAI) has that capability to take a system and supercharge it with capabilities that haven’t been possible before.
This is the best place to start for law firms that are considering or actively seeking to implement GenAI within their practice. An AI-powered case management system could help law firms to cut more than half the time (if not more) that they spend on administrative tasks.
This in turn frees up their time to help them deliver an excellent client experience, something they may have always strived for but have previously been restrained by time-consuming and frustrating tasks.
This is all about to change and what was once the pinnacle of practice excellence, is about to reach a whole new level.
AI to solve core frustrations
Our conversations with customers identified common areas that fee-earners, firm leaders and compliance officers have regularly shared as core frustrations.
For fee-earners, the focus has largely been on finding important information fast. Often a task they hope would take no more than a few minutes, they’re still searching to find a single piece of information from a case 10, even 20, minutes later. This is even more ‘painful’ during a client call.
It’s a similar situation too for law firm leaders who need access to data and insights from across the firm fast, in order to make key strategic decisions.
If it takes half an hour to pull one insight, imagine the days or weeks it takes to form a clear picture from insights across the entire firm. As this time passes, economic factors might be impacting your bottom line or competitors might be getting a step ahead on a key growth opportunity.
The other theme that came up was internal communication. Fee-earners are often time-poor and can’t always call a colleague to explain an action or a task in detail, and so things are either misunderstood or missed altogether. They’re crying out for a tool that can ensure all tasks are clear and assigned in one place.
Like with any good business, if you can get internal communication nailed, then external communication becomes much more effective too.
Others want to use AI to assess the sentiment of incoming emails and messages to help them manage client expectations and avoid complaints, or want it to summarise a document, create actions for a matter, help them with research or draft contracts and reports.
These examples all sound like quite basic things to fix – but as with all innovation, the impact of AI won’t be measured in what it changes, but the effect it has.
For those fee-earners and firm leaders we have spoken to, they know that making information-gathering tasks take seconds rather than minutes, and making communication more streamlined, will be transformative and add up to a huge amount of time they can save, allowing them to focus on the important parts of their job.
This could in turn lead to more value for the practice – more growth, more security, better client retention, all those good things they want to be focused on.
The future of AI
So, why have we spent so much time discussing AI with customers?
All of our research has been critical in helping us to develop a game changing ‘AI experience’ that we will be launching in 2025 to significantly alleviate the admin load surrounding cases for lawyers, while ensuring data and security is paramount.
We really can’t wait to share more details with the sector very soon.
“However exciting AI or any new technology is, if you cannot protect your customers’ data, it is worthless” – that’s what our CEO, Chris Bayne, said when talking about the use of AI across industries.
This is even more prevalent when we talk about it in the context of the legal sector and the importance of compliance.
We know that some of the biggest concerns around AI are security – protecting the sensitive data and information firms hold to ensure compliance and that the firm is secure – and ensuring qualified advice. Lawyers don’t want AI to replace the legal advice and counsel they’ve been trained to deliver.
Before anything, GenAI must be built within secure infrastructure. For law firms to feel even more reassured, a starting point for adopting any form of AI should be a solution that operates safely within the confines of their current IT environment.
This means that it doesn’t interact with any open world data – the AI just works within the four walls of the firm, so to speak. So it can only analyse, and provide insight and responses on the information a firm holds securely, giving you confidence that sensitive information won’t be breached.
Let’s be clear on the second point too. If you’re investing in AI within your case management system, for example, we’re talking about AI for admin, not advice. Legal practitioners are and should always be the expert counsel, no technology will ever replace this.
But we believe AI can remove so many barriers and time constraints that take lawyers’ focus and energy away from the client, to drive practice excellence and improve client satisfaction.
Ultimately, that’s what this is all about. Finding ways to improve the client experience by boosting productivity and communication in other areas of a firm.
We believe the legal sector is on the cusp of an AI revolution – and although the Law Society reported last year that only 19% of lawyers used AI at the time, it said 51% had expressed an interest in adopting AI and 71% of them planned to do it within the next year.
I firmly believe that AI is going to dramatically transform what practice excellence truly looks like and that will have started to happen within many firms by this time next year.
Read more about how Access Legal thinks AI is going to impact the legal industry in 2025, here.
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