Pitching for legal business as a law firm once meant understanding the needs of clients and showing how the company meets. However, at Ashurst, there was a new demand for recent proposal requests. The company is showing how generative artificial intelligence and human expertise can work on client legal projects.
Whether it’s to make a pitch or train junior associates, AI is becoming a dominant presence in the legal workplace, requiring both law firms and corporate legal teams to navigate complex new work relationships between human experts and digital tools.
For Ashurst, the pitch had something to do with another company head-on. Both were given 10 issues to work over two weeks, showing how to use the generated AI.
Asherst won the business. “The reason we succeeded is because of the way we have expertise and enhanced our technology,” says Hillary Goodier, partner and global head of Asher Stored Vance, the company’s technology-enabled legal services division.
However, combining AI with human expertise is not always easy. Goodier says planning is necessary to design work processes that address the strengths and weaknesses of both human and digital tools.
“We’re doing more work ahead to encourage AI to test and test the process,” she says. “And that means an interdisciplinary team of lawyers, project managers and technicians who work with us before we submit the matter.”
There was this fiction in the past where I was grunting and learning how to become a lawyer.
Danny Toby for Piper
The use of AI in the corporate world means that in-house lawyers are beginning to embrace an interdisciplinary approach, says Pamela Salling, managing director of in-house lawyer recruitment for Lindsey & Africa’s legal recruitment firm.
Now, companies want to be internal lawyers to be translators who can bridge law, strategy and technology. And if they can’t, “they’re moving at the finish line,” she says.
As generator AI begins to permeate corporate workplaces, lawyers must prepare to work with senior data executives, says Leigh Dance, founder and president of Eld International, an advisor to the global in-house legal team. “They often join committees with people who lead AI and people who lead information security,” she says. “That means they need to learn about what other features do.”
Meanwhile, generative AI is changing the legal learning experience. This is because technology can tailor content and pedagogy to suit individual learning styles, providing new forms of training, such as simulation and immersive learning.
For example, the Three Crowns of Global Arbitration Law Firm and the Codex project of Stanford University, Legal Innovation Hub, uses Generated AI to create real-life simulations that students and legal experts can use to develop cross-examination skills.
The way junior lawyers develop legal expertise is also changing. Once part of work learning, such as contracts, legal research, and document drafting, AI technology can now handle tasks.
This could be a good thing, says Winston Weinberg, CEO and co-founder of Legal AI startup Harvey. “The premise of a career in law has always been an apprentice. Learn craft from people with experience and go your way with mentorship,” he says.
But these days, the approach has been “lost in the ocean of management tasks,” Weinberg says. Because AI is responsible for this mundane job, junior lawyers are free to spend more time with experienced colleagues and help revive apprentice’s original principles.
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“You learned how to become a lawyer by doing this fiction in the past, doing the groaning work,” says Danny Tobey, AI chair at DLA Piper and a data analytics practice in the Americas. Now, “There are more opportunities for mentorship to what is suitable for humans.”
Toby experienced this evolution firsthand. As an associate, he says he spends 15 hours a day reviewing paper documents. “A few years later, it was all electronic discovery,” he adds. “All I lost was spending time alone in a boxed room. That wasn’t a valuable training time.”
However, the transition from paper to digital files will allow AI to categorize, analyze and extract new insights from legal documents, making lawyers face new challenges. It’s about using AI proactively to achieve new business goals while keeping your data safe.
“It’s one of the most important tensions,” says Pastor Michael, Law professor and dean of the New York School of Black School’s Technology Law Program.
He says the dilemma for internal lawyers is that their corporate bosses and business development teams are ahead of the competition for quick implementation of AI. However, they also have to be careful to prevent data from being misused, lost or stolen.
“As an internal lawyer, you need to monitor your business goals while helping clients navigate those tensions,” the pastor says. “That’s where lawyers make money.”
Law firms face similar tensions as the ability to provide the right solutions depends on the integrity of this information, as guardians of privileged information for their clients.
This means talking with senior executives to ensure AI data governance policies. “I always talk to the board and the CEO’s board of directors and tell them that this is the basis of the accuracy of information across the organization.”
Irresponsible use of data exposes clients to risks that could lead to litigation, regulatory scrutiny and reputational crisis. “We pick up the artwork,” says Toby. “But I would rather leave the vase as is.”
