Extract from Mike Coen’s article “AI and Depositions: What Law Firms Should and Should Not Automate”
For most of the last decade, “modernizing” the deposition meant something as simple as putting a remote proceeding link in the calendar invite. Remote appearances, cloud-based exhibit sharing and searchable transcripts have since become routine. But that shift, significant as it was, mostly digitized the same workflow lawyers have always followed. It didn’t rethink it.
AI is now leading us to something different. Real-time transcript generation, automated exhibit tagging, AI-assisted summaries and post-deposition analytics are moving from nice-to-have novelties to standard offerings across the legal technology market. For litigation teams, the question is no longer whether AI belongs in the deposition process, but which tasks it can and should safely handle and which still require the important and critical human intellect and professional skill sets.
That distinction matters more in a deposition than almost anywhere else in litigation.
