Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Beginners

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage in the business world. It’s become a status marker, indicating to the public that the company uses AI technology and therefore is a business of the future. Unfortunately, more businesses tout AI than actually use it in their business.

Legal teams across industries are modernizing their processes with AI. Using AI-powered legal tools, legal can reduce contract review time to hours instead of weeks, categorize contracts based on specified criteria, and understand patterns better and more quickly than a teammate could. 

There is no doubt that AI  opens up a more efficient world for commercial counsel and general counsels (GCs). But too many in-house counsels are afraid of potential disruption, or worse, of being made obsolete. This is likely because they don’t fully understand AI in legal tech. Here’s a quick rundown of what beginners need to know about AI. 

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

AI is the technology that seeks to replicate human intelligence in machines. On an episode of Cockpit Counsel, Rob May defines AI as “software that you can put out into the world, and without you changing anything, it will adapt and learn and get better.”

While there are different levels of AI sophistication and millions of possible use cases, most AI technology can only undertake specific tasks — like self-driving cars, online chatbots, recommending movies, etc.

The AI used in legal technology specifically uses machine learning algorithms. That means the machines are trained to do specific tasks based on large data sets. The reason AI can parse a forum selection from a force majeure clause and make suggestions on how to correct inconsistencies in your contracts is that the machine was taught by massive amounts of contract data. 

How Can Legal Teams Use AI?

AI can quickly carry out tasks that would take humans entirely too long. To be more specific, Rob May suggested the PAC framework when trying to determine how to apply AI: predict, automate, and classify. 

Some examples of how  legal teams can use AI:

• Drafting and reviewing contracts
• Analyzing contracts 
• Performing ediscovery
• Finding (and correcting) missing terms within a contract
• Sorting and categorizing contracts by type
• Predicting how judges might rule on a case

While AI reproduces human intelligence in machines, the machines still have the advantage of being, well, machines. So while the above are all tasks your team could do, a computer’s brain makes it go by faster. Additionally, a machine can pick up on obscure patterns that may seem insignificant to humans and deliver powerful insight for your business. 

AI can help your legal team move faster and free up your time so you can spend it innovating and driving the business forward. 

Misconceptions About AI

Because of how powerful AI is and how little is known to a non-expert audience, people often worry about its long-term implications. Unfortunately, when no answers are available, the public will make them up.

While AI-powered legal tools are becoming more prevalent, there is still a lot of unknown. For those without background knowledge, the doomsday scenarios of robots gaining sentience and becoming our machine overlords can seem believable, if not likely. At that point, the panic becomes, what will happen if they take over the law?

Machines Can’t Think for Themselves

That brings us to our first misconception: machines only do as they are told. They cannot actually think for themselves. As Eliana Lee said in another episode of Cockpit Counsel, “I think it should be called machine training, not machine learning.” Computers cannot make autonomous decisions or decide on their own course of learning; instead, they are being trained on existing material.

To be useful, AI software needs humans to input the data that trains the AI, assess the quality of the output, and organize the data output in a way that has significance to the business. Without human intervention, the machines are like a Roomba in the forest: aimless and pointless. 

AI Is Both Underhyped and Overhyped

As May said, there’s a lot of talk about AI but most of it under or over estimates its capability. Because while the public believes that AI robots can take over at any time, May said there is no evidence that AI is even yet at the level of sophistication. As an expert in the field of AI, he should know.

On the flip side, AI often underperforms humans when a program or software is new. While machines have superior processing capabilities to the human brain, they still have to be trained. According to May, this can cause people to lose interest and not spend the time needed to invest in and finetune the software.

AI Can’t Replace You

As mentioned before, AI technology can only do what it is programmed to do. AI is not at the stage where it can make decisions autonomously or solve problems based on common sense. This is why it can’t replace you.

The worry that AI will take over your job as legal counsel is unfounded for a few reasons, but mainly because humans are still an integral part of the machine learning process. Legal professionals are still needed to argue a case, interface with other humans, and make note of changes that would impact the way the machine processes. Your job requires complex problem-solving that AI wouldn’t be able to do on its own. But it can make your job significantly less tedious.

Takeaways

Artificial Intelligence can bring speed and increased productivity to in-house legal departments. It is a powerful tool that can streamline commonly tedious legal tasks like contract review and analysis, freeing up legal’s time to become a more strategic business partner. 

While some might be afraid that AI is coming for their jobs, machine learning is not so advanced that computers can make decisions on their own. Read this blog for more insights into using AI-powered tools in your legal department.