Extract from Lucie Allen’s article “The AI Future Is Becoming Clear—But the Path to It Is Not”
More than two years after the public launch of ChatGPT, the impact that AI will have on the future of the legal industry is starting to become more clear. It’s not a stretch to say that AI will dramatically change how law firms and legal departments perform routine legal tasks, such as document review, summarization, and drafting. And it will play a crucial role in assisting human lawyers in even more complex tasks such as contract negotiation, litigation strategy, and legal research. And lawyers and law firms will need to change as well. That includes changes to traditional legal education and ongoing training, along with the ways that lawyers provide value to their clients.
As data becomes more available, decision-making will also change. There will be additional security and ethical risks, along with the need to defend against those. Law firms will be navigating a more complex landscape than ever. Their leaders will need to keep their knowledge current, and their lawyers will need to keep their skills sharp.
But while the future is coming into focus, it isn’t being realized quite yet. And the path from where we are now to the AI-powered vision we can now conceptualize is far from defined. While there is a great deal of talk from legaltech vendors—and a few firms are doing quite a bit—we have not seen much demonstrable or consistent action.
