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The Role of AI in Law

Discover how AI is changing the legal industry, improving accuracy and decision-making, automating tasks and document generation, and reducing operational costs.
Jan 21, 2025  · 9 min read

It’s fair to say that no one is exempt from AI's disruptive power. From finance and manufacturing to healthcare and education, every sector and industry is turning to AI to improve decision-making, automate tasks, and reduce operational costs.

Even in the legal industry, a historically slow adopter of new technologies, AI is rapidly becoming a game-changer. According to the Future of Professionals Report 2024 by the Thomson Reuters Institute, 79% of law firm respondents anticipate that AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work within the next five years, while 42% believe that AI’s transformational potential has surged.

In this article, we will analyze how AI is revolutionizing the legal industry. We will cover the use of AI in the legal industry, listing the main applications of traditional machine learning models and generative AI. We will also point to the main benefits of this technology, as well as the disadvantages and challenges of adopting AI.

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The Role of AI in Law

AI is rapidly changing the way legal professionals see and practice their jobs. In this section, we will analyze the main applications of AI in law.

Legal professionals, from lawyers and judges to clerks and law-makers, spend considerable time analyzing legal documents and case law. Fortunately, with the help of AI, professionals can now streamline this process, retrieving relevant information that would otherwise take hours of manual research to find.

AI can be used to classify documents –by their type and content, to assign labels and summarise them, or to extract information included in legal texts, such as quantities, dates, duration, etc. AI can also be used to analyze and prepare statistical graphs on large volumes of legal information, which comes particularly handy in cases involving large documentation.

In recent years, numerous AI-powered legal tools have mushroomed. For example, Clio, powered by the latest Microsoft Azure and OpenAI GPT-4 technology, can deliver precise, contextually relevant insights for your firm, including by extracting key details from documents and cases in seconds.

Automating routine tasks

AI is regarded in the field as a key driver for boosting productivity. Improving efficiency by automating routine tasks is one of the main priorities in law, an industry where everyone is familiar with workflow bottlenecks. 

Following the rise of AI, legal practitioners can now increase their productivity in many ways, from identifying best-case law instantly and automating document management to summarizing legal documents and enhancing litigation preparedness.

The automation of tasks will benefit not only legal practitioners but also society in general. As governments and public authorities embrace AI, administrative burdens will be significantly lowered, thereby improving citizen’s satisfaction and trust in the public sector.

Predictive analytics in legal outcomes is probably one of the most promising –and, arguably, controversial– applications of AI in law. With the right tools, legal practitioners are starting to train AI models that can predict legal outcomes and winning scores based on principal factors, including specifics, history, and previous judicial decisions.

Thanks to these tools, lawyers can set realistic expectations for their clients and reduce risk in their litigation strategies based on accurate insights about the other parties involved in the case.

This is the case of LexisNexis, an AI-supported tool that allows you to enhance your litigation strategy with insights about judges, courts, and opposing attorneys.

Generative AI encompasses a category of AI systems specifically designed to create new content, such as text, images, audio, and video. As generative AI continues to evolve, it could fundamentally transform the landscape of legal practice. Let’s see the most promising applications of generative AI in law.

AI-powered document generation

This is probably the most compelling use case of generative AI in the legal industry. Legal professionals are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT to create preliminary drafts of legal documents, such as contracts, pleadings, and memos. 

The key is providing clear prompts and treating the output as a starting point rather than a finished product. For example, you might ask ChatGPT to draft a basic renting contract, and then apply your expertise to customize it for your client's specific needs. 

While the use of generative AI tools for document generation can result in notable time savings, it’s important to know the limitations of this technology, including the possibility of AI hallucinations, AI biases, and potential data privacy and confidentiality issues that may affect your clients.

Curious about how this works in practice? Check out our dedicated article to discover how to use ChatGPT for legal. 

The popularity of genAI-powered legal assistants is rapidly rising. These tools can be used as a legal expert with unique capabilities to help you in all kinds of practice areas and legal proceedings, including document summarization, legal research Q&A, and contract policy compliance. 

Equally, virtual assistants can be adopted by lawyers and law firms to enhance 24/7 client interaction and support, thereby improving the quality of legal services and, ultimately, customer satisfaction.

While AI legal assistants are likely to become lawyers’ best allies, people with no legal background can also turn to them to help them during simple legal tasks. By choosing legal assistants like AI Lawyer instead of expensive legal consultations, virtual legal assistants can contribute to the democratization of legal education and access to justice.

Advantages of AI Integration in Law

There are several advantages that AI brings to the legal profession, and we’ve outlined some of them below: 

Increased efficiency and productivity

​​AI can be used internally to optimize the day-to-day operations of legal practitioners. Such areas might include automating routine, time-consuming tasks to allow legal professionals to focus on more complex and value-added work.  

Indeed, according to estimates by Thomson Reuters, AI could free up additional work time for law firm professionals at a pace of 4 hours per week within one year, which means if the average professional works approximately 48 weeks of the year, this will equate to roughly 200 hours freed up over the course of a year. 

Cost reduction

As already mentioned, AI is regarded as a critical technology to increase productivity in legal firms. Repetitive, time-consuming processes make up a big chunk of the work of law firms, which normally rely on junior lawyers to get the job done. With AI, these tasks can be done in a matter of seconds, which can dramatically reduce the cost of law firms.

This is already changing the whole legal business. Lowering operational costs through AI solutions means law firms will be able to offer more competitive services and prices to clients, which can ultimately improve access to justice.

Improved accuracy

AI tools can process information much faster and, in many cases, more accurately than humans. These technologies enable pattern recognition and predictive analytics to assist in litigation strategy development and to offer clients a competitive edge. Equally, in regulatory frameworks, the assistance of AI can be critical to ensure legal compliance, minimizing human errors.  

Curious about how AI can support business decision-making? Check out our Data-Driven Decision Making for Business Course to learn all about it.

Disadvantages and Challenges of AI in Law

Of course, there are potential drawbacks when it comes to integrating any new technology, and AI is no different:

Ethical and bias concerns

When it comes to AI use in law, ethical concerns are paramount. Practicing ethical AI is important for maintaining trust and fairness and the legal administration. AI models, trained on large datasets, can inadvertently adopt the biases present in the data, leading to discriminatory outcomes that can severely affect fundamental rights, including the right to access to justice, the right to a fair trial, as well as the right to equality and non-discrimination.

Data security and privacy issues

On the other hand, data privacy remains a significant challenge. The use of AI requires access to large amounts of personal data, which can raise concerns about data security and privacy. Robust data protection measures by law firms and the justice administration are essential to safeguard sensitive information.

In addition, compliance with the evolving legal landscape is mandatory for legal practitioners to ensure data protection and fair and safe use of AI. A great example of how the future of compliance will look is the recently approved EU AI Act, a comprehensive regulation that requires companies, including providers of legal services, to advance strict regulatory measures. 

Check out our EU AI Act Fundamentals Skill Track to learn about this innovative and ambitious rule and how to stay compliant.

Dependence on technology

One of the main concerns about the adoption of AI in law is the risk of becoming too dependent on this technology. Technology makes our lives easier. It can perform tasks in seconds that would take minutes, hours, or even days. In the case of generative AI, the number of use cases in the legal industry is potentially unlimited, from drafting legal arguments and preparing contracts to summarizing lengthy case law and completing compliance forms.

Yet, suppose we let technology do everything for legal practitioners. In such an instance, we risk losing the imagination, attention to detail, and research capabilities that every good lawyer should have. In the end, the law is a human instrument made to regulate human action, and every move intended to transfer responsibility to machines should be considered very carefully.

AI literacy skills gap

The legal sector has already embarked on a journey of transformation, with AI and other strategic technologies being the key drivers of change. However, to ensure a rapid and smooth transformation, legal practitioners, including attorneys, judges, and public officers, need to know how to use these powerful tools. 

In this vein, training, reskilling, and early education in AI are all crucial ingredients in the recipe for success. Schools, universities, and the government will all have a part to play in helping to close the AI skills gap. However, there is also a lot players in the legal industry can do to build AI literacy

Fortunately, DataCamp is here to help those in the legal profession. With our DataCamp for Business solution, we can help your company become data and AI literate. With a scalable solution that can work for teams of any size, along with customizable learning paths and detailed reporting, DataCamp for Business can help you transform your legal business and become AI-ready. 

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Case Study of AI Implementation in Law

To illustrate how law firms are progressively adopting AI, let’s talk about Cuatrecasas, a Spanish law firm with operations around the world.  

The law firm has been an early adopter of AI. In 2023, the company launched a pioneering genAI-powered tool that can draft contracts, analyze legal documents, and identify relevant information for a certain case. Developed under the name of Cuatrecasas Legal Expert IA (CELIA), this new tool is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. 

CELIA is a powerful legal assistant who has helped Cuatrecasas lawyers increase their productivity in all kinds of tasks, from anonymization of personal data and review of the Due Diligence process to drafting of contracts and legal documents. 

The benefits of generative AI are clear. In the words of Francesc Muñoz, Chief Information Officer of Cuatrecasas:

Generative AI will provide a qualitative leap for Cuatrecasas and the entire sector. It is undoubtedly a tool to assist lawyers, a co-pilot, that will allow us to increase our contribution of value to clients and further sophisticate our services.

Francesc MuñozChief Information Officer at Cuatrecasas

The AI revolution is here to stay, with impacts in the legal industry that are still uncertain. There is no doubt about the industry's optimism, which sees AI as a critical technology to increase operational productivity, reduce working times and costs, and allow law practitioners to have a more fulfilling career.

As advanced by Steve Hasker, CEO of Thomson Reuters,

Professionals no longer need to speculate on the potential for AI to impact their work as they are now witnessing its effects firsthand. As we look to the future, one thing is clear: AI-empowered professionals and their companies will outpace those who resist this transformative era.

Steve HaskerCEO of Thomson Reuters

So what can we expect for the future? On the one hand, new and more powerful AI tools, particularly trained for legal tasks, will reach the market. How fast they become ubiquitous in the industry will depend on the level of AI literacy of legal practitioners. In this regard, upskilling and reskilling will be critical to speed up AI adoption in the legal industry. 

At the same time, how legal practitioners use these powerful tools will also be influenced by upcoming regulations governing AI use, such as the EU AI Act or the GDPR Data Protection Regulation.

Check out our Understanding GDPR Course to gain a clear understanding of GDPR principles and how to set up GDPR-compliant processes in this comprehensive course.

Conclusion

As we have seen, AI is poised to transform many aspects of the legal industry. AI and machine learning promise to make legal operations more efficient, more accessible, and also less prone to human error or bias. Yet, as with all rapidly changing technologies, AI also raises many new challenges and concerns.

Regulation, ethics, and workforce changes are key issues that will need to be grappled with going forward. Governments and regulators will need to walk a very fine line in seeking to encourage innovation while also protecting consumers from potential abuses or unintended consequences.

The legal industry will also need to develop quality assurance and explainability of complex machine learning models to build trust with end users.

AI marks the start of a new and very exciting chapter for the legal industry, and there are compelling reasons to embrace this unique technology. DataCamp is working hard to provide comprehensive and accessible resources for businesses in the legal industry to keep updated with AI development. Check them out:


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Author
Javier Canales Luna
LinkedIn

I am a freelance data analyst, collaborating with companies and organisations worldwide in data science projects. I am also a data science instructor with 2+ experience. I regularly write data-science-related articles in English and Spanish, some of which have been published on established websites such as DataCamp, Towards Data Science and Analytics Vidhya As a data scientist with a background in political science and law, my goal is to work at the interplay of public policy, law and technology, leveraging the power of ideas to advance innovative solutions and narratives that can help us address urgent challenges, namely the climate crisis. I consider myself a self-taught person, a constant learner, and a firm supporter of multidisciplinary. It is never too late to learn new things.

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