‘Everyone is on their own voyage of discovery. But is any law firm leveraging AI in a material way? I don’t think they are – yet.’
Derek Southall, Gowling WLG
Can legal AI match the hype? Legal Business asks key figures about the future for law technology
PUBLICITY KING
‘Of course they’ll have prices, but then you’ll try to work your way around those prices. The reason you’re seeing lots of press releases that say “law firm signs up to use [tech provider] Kira” is because Kira will give you a discount if you do that. Honestly, “law firm uses Kira” isn’t really news, let’s be brutally honest. But Kira will say: “I’ll give you a 10% publicity discount if you do it.” Why not? Why wouldn’t I do that? That then helps Kira to tell a story that says Kira is already being used by Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Freshfields… Suddenly if I’m law firm number 72 and I see all these big law firms, I’m thinking, shit, I’d better use that too.’
Nick West, chief strategy officer, Mishcon de Reya
LAWYERS STILL NEEDED
‘While there are dramatic headlines about robots replacing humans, we find within the firm technology empowers lawyers to perform a more interesting role in terms of the work they are doing. There is still a need for legal expertise and for the judgement lawyers can bring to the process.’
Neville Eisenberg, senior partner, Berwin Leighton Paisner
IN-HOUSE LEADERS
‘The in-house functions are leading the way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t law firms doing interesting things, because there are, from Allen & Overy at one end to DWF at the other.’
Karl Chapman, chief executive, Riverview Law
RICH DATA BUILDS CONFIDENCE
‘You need to reconcile between the human and machine review to get meaningful data, which is three times the amount of work, but what is critical is getting that rich data. The goal of all of this is to build confidence among our lawyers.’
Edward Chan, banking partner and AI head, Linklaters
MAN-PLUS-MACHINE
‘Say the client has 1,000 leases, and you had to read 1,000 leases and find all the change of control clauses: what the machine does is read all of them in seconds and put them in buckets. That’s the power of the technology. Man-plus-machine is better than man or machine. The machines can take the drudgery out of law – I can’t think of a better time to be a young lawyer.’
Dan Jansen, chief executive, Nextlaw Labs
‘We believe the technology capability largely already exists, but most legal departments are not ready to deploy it.’
Sara Morgan, Axiom
IMPRESSIVE IMPACT
‘People are very positive about AI. We have started using the technology and are hugely impressed with it. It cuts out a lot of the manual process of due diligence, but is no replacement for technical legal analysis. The next step would be whether it can provide accurate analysis of the results. That would be a really big shift.’
Sally Wokes, corporate partner, Slaughter and May
A DIFFICULT LANDSCAPE
‘There’s nobody out there who has trodden this path in a meaningful way, so everyone is on their own voyage of discovery. It is also a difficult landscape to navigate with the sheer quantity and variety of systems and price points being pitched to you. But is any law firm really leveraging AI in a material way despite the hype? I don’t think they are – yet.’
Derek Southall, partner and innovation head, Gowling WLG
REAL LEADERSHIP
‘Some firms are very well set up with real leaders in thought management. They have taken this seriously to adopt technology. But to sell it internally you need to go partner-by-partner. Other firms have to be guided through step by step. There is real divergence. You sometimes come across partners with AI as a side activity, which takes a backseat.’
Emily Foges, chief executive, Luminance
TECH-ASSISTED BUT SERVICE-LED
‘The distinction between the development of AI and its adoption is an overlooked, but absolutely critical, distinction. Why? Because we believe that the technology capability largely already exists, but most legal departments are simply not ready to adopt it and successfully deploy it.
‘Most within legal are not yet ready for AI because they haven’t built the services and processes needed to successfully adopt and deploy the technology. We say the future of law is tech-enabled but services-led.’
Sara Morgan, UK general manager, Axiom