Lawyers’ work consists primarily of working with texts, analysing information, and drawing and formulating conclusions. Large language models (LLMs) being the basis of artificial intelligence (AI) systems handle this really well and are constantly being improved. This is why they are an excellent support of our work.

Artificial intelligence facilitates and accelerates work, generating real benefits for organisations, e.g. increasing the sales.

We would like to share with you our knowledge and experience in implementing AI in JDP, therefore, we have put together this newsletter. You will find here information on how AI can be used in everyday work to facilitate and accelerate the activities of your legal department without exposing your organisation to security risks.

Implementing AI in lawyers’ work – first steps

Identifying needs and priorities

To find an appropriate AI solution, first, you will need to determine what it will be used for. In legal practice, AI particularly helps in:

The greatest benefits come from automating repetitive, predictable, clearly defined processes that are essential to the business. A good example of a process that can be easily automated using AI is the review of contracts commonly used by an organisation.

An organisation that concludes many contracts of the same type usually uses document templates, but it also must comply with customers’ requirements. The organisation should have clearly defined criteria for the expected contract. These criteria should be properly described. Typically, contracts commonly concluded by an organisation concern this organisation’s core business area, e.g. sales. Speeding up the sales contracts review can streamline the sales process and hence generate greater profits. The legal department will therefore generate real value for the organisation.

In conclusion, if you decide to implement AI tools in your legal department, we suggest starting by answering two crucial questions:

  • what will the AI tool be used for?
  • where will AI create the greatest value?

This will help you determine your company’s needs and priorities, and hence choose the right tool.

Choosing an AI for legal work

There are many tools available on the market, both for general use and designed specifically for lawyers. It is also possible to create a tool tailored to a customer’s own needs.

When choosing an AI tool, you should pay particular attention to:

1adoption of a given solution by other companies;

2assurance regarding the information security;

3option to test the tool;

4amount and method of calculating fees;

5contract term and termination right.

Assessing an AI tool

Once you have found an AI-based tool that meets your specific needs, you should assess it:

  • formally – by analysing basic information about the tool, and
  • operationally – preferably through functionality testing.

The assessment can be conducted simultaneously, but if you wish to upload any information covered by professional secrecy, trade secrets or other confidential data or personal data during the tests, we recommend starting with the formal analysis.

To this end, contractual and technical documents relating to the tool should be collected. These include in particular:

After identifying the needs and gathering the above-mentioned documents, you should determine the purposes for which the AI tool will be used, and prepare a description of how the AI tool works.

You should focus on the tool’s purpose and functionalities (e.g. audio-to-text transcription), data transfers (where and to whom the data is sent), and the extent of control over the tool (to what extent it is possible to interfere with the tool, whether it is possible to configure the tool and integrate it with other tools). This will help you define your needs, verify the suitability of the tool, and determine the basic information necessary for a formal assessment of the tool.

In next issues of our newsletter, we will discuss further steps for the safe implementation of AI in legal practice.

Contact

Contact our team specialising in new technology law if you:

Michał Pietrzyk – Attorney-at-law, Senior Associate in the IP/IT Team, Digital Transformation and Automation Lead