What Is AI In Legal Writing
AI in legal drafting is a new frontier for eliminating time-consuming errors and accurately predicting issues related to precedents. It does not specifically tell lawyers how to write. Instead, it augments the workflow of legal professionals by enhancing the effectiveness of the writing team and estimating various concerns arising with the given work.
Just imagining the circumstances when you only have a week to draft 200 pages of summary judgment motion, helps us realize the significance of the transition from paper to electronic processes. In the former way of writing, classic bluebooks were used to make elaborate analyses of library resources. Those pages were then distributed among the legal team for collaborative editing. This was a time-consuming exercise that invariably generated unexpected issues on the review dates .
Modern AI technologies integrated into the legal work plan, however, take no extra time and money. Instead, they help lawyers on their daily work by freeing up quality time to focus on the most essential issues emerging from the collaboration. For instance, the use of AI writing tools improves the efficiency and accuracy of lawyers’ research efforts, thereby increasing predictability and transparency.
"AI writing tools streamline the proofreading tasks by identifying and correcting minor errors, and making suggestions to improve the content. Tools such as plain language software enable lawyers to cascade their clients’ stories in a legally relevant manner to their audience. AI techniques also help with estimating the advantages or disadvantages of different versions of the legal language being considered."
Advantages of AI For Attorneys
The advantages of AI for lawyers and firms are substantial. The often-deal lawyers are inundated with writing: three hours is a reasonable timeframe to craft a motion, a memo, a pleadings comment, or another significant document. But for numerous lawyers, that drafting period can considerably extend, cutting into what could be valuable billable hours. Automating legal writing can bring efficiency to this challenge.
AI programs don’t only help with efficiency, though. Teams can reduce the errors they make when drafting documents by using AI. It can catch common typos, repetitive grammar mistakes, or rules that would otherwise affect the document’s quality. More than just identifying these issues as part of the drafting process, AI can actually allow teams to correct them. For instance, grammar checkers can amend pronouns or check for active voice, while spell checkers can be set up to change the spelling of words that may vary by region or country. Since more errors are caught in this manner, lawyers and firms can also save money, and use the time that would have gone to revising to instead pursue increasingly profitable opportunities.
More than just basic grammar or spelling assistance, AI tools can also help lawyers create more nuanced documents. Editing a motion as a team often requires each member to weigh in on the language and tone of the paper. More data-driven AI systems can identify common word choices across a law firm’s library, or in other similar documents, helping the team to emulate the successes of previous pieces of content. Sheriff, Alexander, and Koo note how law firm Mayer Brown "hired WrightOwl to help find the right words to strengthen their cases." While this kind of backup can increase productivity, it can also make lawyers look even better to their clients, who will appreciate the extra layer of careful editing.
AI doesn’t have to directly assist lawyers with their writing to benefit them. AI insights about the current state of the industry or its needs can help firms decide if their own writing — and advertising — is on target. AI can analyze client bases and the cases they are involved with to streamline a law firm’s workflow. This insight can help firms take on more business from more clients without feeling stretched thin.
Whatever method a firm uses to integrate AI into its legal writing processes, it can and will increase efficiency, accuracy, and profitability.
Popular AI Tools for Legal Writing
A variety of AI tools can assist with different aspects of legal writing, from document drafting to language checking. Robot Lawyer Bot’s legal writing assistance starts with its AI powered templates. Its AI Draft Keywords Engine is designed to auto-populate critical keywords into customized forms that help guide the drafting process. Sophia AI is a beta tool that goes beyond basic text evaluation to provide suggestions for improving style and formatting. This tool is designed for writers targeting a law school audience and focuses on common mistakes. Judith text helps automate legal drafting by suggesting content based on a model user document (think "smart templates"). The AI is trained on the attorneys’ owned content (newsletters, blog posts, pleadings, etc.) and is used internally to assist with editorial review. LegalSifter is an app that scans documents and highlights common issues. It "sifts" through any version of a standard contract or a new draft, and highlights common problems, including limitations of liability, liability caps, indemnities, etc. It first "sifts" through the contract to find relevant clauses applicable to your document. Once found, it compares the clauses against a reference clause, i.e., a clause standard to your company, industry, or jurisdiction, and highlights differences. It also lists the clauses that are missing from your draft but are in the reference clause, for you to consider including if necessary. With the LegalSifter app, counsel saves time otherwise spent dealing with typical issues that arise in contracts. SpeakWrite offers both legal transcription services and text entry assistants for desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Some examples: Clara removes bias by scanning and analyzing original text to suggest differences ideas, language and views. It offers suggestions for content direction and can be particularly helpful to those crafting briefs. Outwrite is a writing assistant that focuses on proofreading to fix spelling, grammar and style errors. If you have legalese you want eliminated from a brief, consider an engineer’s comprehensive analysis instead. For those new with AI writing assistants and unsure about what to ask, ChatGPT offers a prompt library that includes nearly 100 suggested prompts for legal writing.
Challenges To Implementing AI In Legal Writing
While the potential benefits of AI in legal writing are impressive, the technology is not without its challenges. Developers are working expeditiously to address the most common problems faced when integrating AI into their legal writing software, but the technology is still in its infancy. Issues related to accuracy, data privacy, and the need for human oversight are all key concerns with legal writing AI.
Accuracy is a consistent challenge for developers. They’re tasked with developing algorithms that scour trillions of documents to accurately predict and offer insights and recommendations for writing, while maintaining compliance with the rules of good legal writing. The repercussions for lawyers of inadvertently filing incorrect documents with the court, or not structuring a pleading in accordance with a local rules , can be extremely serious and even career threatening.
Lawyers also need to be certain that their data remains confidential and secure. Data privacy is currently a hot button issue in the legal industry, and while every company staunchly defends its data privacy policy, there are only so many times these companies can say "Trust me" before lawyers are no longer willing to take the risk with their client’s data.
Oh, and then there is the issue of lawyers having to take a step back and allow a computer to write a legal document for the client. While not exactly an artificial intelligence issue, it’s certainly a hurdle human resources departments have had to overcome when asking employees to utilize software systems otherwise unheard of in the workplace – think Microsoft Word 25 years ago. It took time for people to get used to and for the hype to die down. Just as lawyers have had to adapt, legal writing AI firms must do the same.
Future Of Legal Writing With AI
As we look to uphold the law, who is going to wield the sword of Justice? Is it going to be the new age lawyer, the digital native? Or perhaps a personified stream of code developed by an artificial intelligence (AI)? Realistically this might not be the right question to ask. AI is here and there are already myriad technologies that help us practice the law more efficiently, with better accuracy, and a greater net value — most of which you have likely experienced firsthand as a legal writer. From research tools to document automation, and just recently the use of chatGPT to draft press releases, make no mistake, AI is only going to get better, smarter, and more useful for lawyers … and of course legal writers too.
However, even where we do not yet depend on it entirely, we are far from desensitized to its presence. For example, we already delegate mind-numbing tasks that we used to enjoy (pestering our friends or professors with endless witticisms, ranting involuntarily, telling a story) to AI through the use of several popular phone apps like Grammarly. There is also the rise of new tech, like voice recognition devices, that we simply can’t live without anymore. And so "new tech" becomes "just technology," the same way that "Internet" has become "just the Internet."
Today in the legal world we’re faced with another major breakthrough: chatGPT. Understanding that there is indeed a line (especially in our profession) where the use of AI may go too far, let’s look at some of the industry trends that we can expect to see in the coming years as they pertain to the field of Legal Writing:
The fact of the matter is AI is only going to keep evolving and transforming the practice of law. What we will ultimately see in the coming years is that as the technology changes, we, as human beings, will adapt. We will find ways to work together with AI to make our jobs easier, smarter, and more efficient. After all, we’re used to using tools and AI is just that, a tool.
Ethical Implications of AI in Legal Writing
Although many of the tools for legal writing with AI are still on the fringes, ultimately we will struggle with how we will maintain professional and ethical standards once we have the ability to generate every word that appears in a document with the help of AI.
Call me old-fashioned, but my view is that there is so much that can go wrong, stylistically and ethically-not to mention from a business development standpoint-when lawyers employ AI to write for them that I can only hope the technology will be such that lawyers will quickly learn that cobbling whatever results the AI produces will lead to embarrassment, lost credibility and potential sanctions.
That said, as we work toward learning how to incorporate AI into our writing philosophies, let us not forget the ethical issues that have already arisen from the use of AI in other fields. For example, the use of bots in the drafting of public documents raises concerns. A group of UK researchers looked at the working paper, "When Is a Law Firm Not a Law Firm? The Legal Ethics of Bots" by Ian Kerr Bell. The authors question the unique ethical dilemmas AI poses, including:
The most interesting point Kerr makes in the paper is the idea of a "moral crumple zone , " which Kerr describes in this way:
The concept of the "moral crumple zone" is a new form of moral hazard to which AI agents and autonomous systems may give rise. Whereas moral hazards refer to situations where one party is protected against risk while another bears the costs, moral crumple zones refer to the fact that the negligence of one party can distort the moral risks borne by the negligent party’s accomplices. Simply put—if the job is done by a machine, the moral crumple zone is on the machine. If the machine fails, humans on the periphery will get morally crumpled.
As others begin to look at the moral implications of using AI in writing, CITRIS (Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society), brings together experts to look at many facets of responsible AI. Their report, "Ethical Considerations in AI Laboratories" looks at topics such as:
While there is so much to learn about writing effectively with AI, we must never forget that as lawyers, we have a duty to our clients and the public as relates to our use of AI. The use of bots and AI in legal writing raises serious ethical questions that we must ask now, while we still have the ability to answer them.