The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in law firms and corporate legal departments. By incorporating new tools powered by AI, firms and legal departments have increased operational efficiencies by reducing workloads, decreasing human errors, streamlining recruitment processes, and accomplishing in minutes what used to take days. No longer fanciful science fiction, software programs are redefining what can be achieved in document review, research, accounting, hiring, and legal analysis. 

It’s challenging, though, to research all of the new technologies and determine which ones are essential for the legal community. Here’s a closer look at five of the top legal operations tools available for implementing AI in your practice today. 

AI Legal Research Tool: CARA by Casetext

Case Analysis Research Assistant, or CARA, is an AI tool by Casetext that analyzes citations and returns a list of relevant suggested cases not cited specifically in the document. Lawyers can tap CARA to find on-point authorities in seconds and review the cases likely to be cited by opposing counsel. 

Using a proprietary algorithm to search legal documents, statutes, opinions, and articles, CARA allows the average attorney to research more efficiently without worrying that ideal cases may have been missed.    

AI Litigation Analysis Tool: Westlaw Edge

Modern legal analytics platforms are essentially tool kits customized to a firm’s specific needs. Westlaw Edge, Thomson Reuters’ next-generation legal research product, has upended the industry to edge past LexisNexis and offer broader coverage of all federal and state courts. Attorneys can compare results by judges, courts, attorneys, law firms, and case types to uncover insightful trends, predict case outcomes, analyze IP filings, and research opponents.

As of February 2020, advanced AI within the software evaluates more than 250 factors to generate a “probability of enactment” score for particular bills in legislature. The new tool also highlights the various industries likely to be impacted by a bill’s passage, giving law firms a more comprehensive picture for their clients. Since changing laws represent yet another variable that can impact a lawsuit, the use of AI is expected to greatly improve legal services.  

AI Human Resources Tool: Atlas by Workland

Extensive use of AI tools in recruitment is still somewhat controversial, as critics worry software will “learn” or inherit human bias and inadvertently systematize discrimination. However, many law firms use AI tools for simple tasks like scheduling interviews, making travel arrangements, sending targeted job listings, and screening thousands of resumes for the best candidates.

The Atlas platform employs an algorithm to generate a percentage-based compatibility score between the employer and each applicant. In addition to automating job postings and communications, Atlas also leverages AI to streamline reference checks, social media sourcing, application processing, and performance analysis. 

AI Accounting Tool: PCLaw

PCLaw started as the best financial software for law firms in Canada and has since evolved to a global accounting powerhouse run jointly by LEAP and LexisNexis. A good AI-powered accounting system provides legal practices with an all-in-one money management solution. With features like expense tracking, liability examination, and trust management, PCLaw is among the most powerful tools available.

AI Contract Management Tool: LexCheck

LexCheck is the only company in the world that has cracked the code that enables AI to accomplish the review work of a lawyer in negotiating contracts. The company was founded by a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. Used by corporate legal departments and top-tier law firms, the LexCheck contract review and negotiation platform harnesses machine learning to fully automate the work normally performed by legal staff in marking up and negotiating a business contract. 

The software is customized to the legal department’s own contract negotiation playbook, marking up and evaluating both first and third party agreements as if a trained in-house attorney for that particular firm were doing the review. Training attorneys to do this kind of review is expensive and time consuming. And while outsourcing can save money, it can result in subpar quality. LexCheck delivers control, consistency, time and money savings, and potential compliance damage risk mitigation. 

Perhaps most impressive, though, is LexCheck’s ability to review and return a contract in under three minutes. Law firms and corporate legal departments can then complete their own analysis of the findings, accept the changes, or simply attach the suggestions to the contracts they are forwarding to the counterparty. This improves the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of legal departments that handle contract negotiations for frequently used business agreements like non-disclosure agreements, license agreements, and master service agreements.

AI Legal Operations Tools Will Upend the Industry in 2021

As law firms and legal departments struggle to cut costs during the coronavirus pandemic, technologies that leverage AI have enabled them to standardize their practices for better core efficiency. In 2021, top legal professionals will integrate these tools so seamlessly that they will no longer think of it as “adopting AI.” Tech-powered solutions like electronic discovery, contract review and negotiation, and supervised learning will simply be “the way.”