One of the biggest time commitments that comes with legal work is simply poring over documents and doing associated research. However, there has long been an expectation that artificial intelligence and machine learning would be able to reduce those time commitments and free up law offices to handle other duties more ably going forward. Now, that seemingly science-fiction future may be much closer to reality than many lawyers realize.
For instance, in the U.K., the government's Serious Fraud Office recently announced it is using artificial intelligence to increase the rapidity – and accuracy – with which it can conduct investigations into complex legal matters, according to Economia.
What's the outcome?
The SFO says it made the move to adopt AI as part of its document management efforts because it felt it had to as a means of keeping up with the rate of technological advancement, the report said. The SFO's chief technology officer, Ben Denison, told Economia that the effort effectively quadrupled the amount of data its forensics teams could handle. The AI system was used as part of a 2017 investigation that involved the scanning of 30 million documents, and worked at the same speed as about 2,000 lawyers.
The benefit for lawyers
When scanning files into a document management system and setting up workflows to ensure lawyers get access to the documents they need on-demand, AI can further help make those documents quickly and easily searchable, according to Lexology. This comes in addition to the benefit of quickly analyzing documents and saving potentially massive amounts of time for each case.
In the near future, AI may also be able to help lawyers better predict the outcomes of their cases by matching the relevant data from other cases that have been entered into their systems, the report said.
When lawyers have the flexibility advanced document management and AI allow, they may be able to get better outcomes for their cases on an ongoing basis.
