5 questions to ask of your legal AI technology

Reading through the small print with a fine-tooth comb is the mantra of anyone working in the legal profession. However, as the activity suggests it takes huge amounts of concentration, hours of searching through paperwork trying to find the answers to very specific questions. As many legal teams strive to work smarter, they are turning to AI tools to get the answers they need quickly.

Time remains a lawyer’s prime currency, so by turning to AI for quick solutions their time can be spent more wisely closing deals and delivering more value to clients. So the question is: will your legal tech provider actually save you time from the get go or will it take time to get started?

There are five key areas that you should think about when choosing your legal AI technology.

• Onboarding
• Getting the AI ready
• Versatility
• Ease of reporting
• Compatibility and integration

If you’ve decided to invest in technology which is supposed to make your life easier, the last thing you need is hours of training on the new platform which is likely to deter your team from using it. When assessing AI tools it’s important to ask yourself, will I read contracts faster with this application or is it only designed to teach a machine to extract data?

Does the AI require a lot of training?

You shouldn’t have to second guess how your AI works, it should be intuitive enough to interpret what you are asking of it. It’s worth noting that most AI providers today either suggest that you use their pre-trained models or require you to train your own by feeding it with sufficient information. The problem with these approaches are: can you trust the models and how much time will it take to train your own?
This is why it’s crucial that you guide your AI legal technology with your own words, using your own expertise and know-how without necessarily having to retrain it.

Can the system be used on different languages?

The majority of legal technologies available today have trained their AI in English by leveraging the publicly available contracts. This method allows users to ask basic questions and generate some decent results, albeit in the language of Shakespeare. Despite saving users a significant amount of time to get started, the pre trained model may not be as relevant to your needs as it should be. Unfortunately, the main shortcoming of these pre-trained models is that they cannot deliver the same quality of results in multiple languages. So European, Asian or any other non-English speaking law firms are faced with the daunting prospect of training an AI in their mother tongue from scratch. This is not only time consuming but also too expensive to even get started.

Analysing documents is only the first step, what else can it do?

It’s one thing for your AI technology to speed up your contractual review process, but it’s another story if you then have to spend time extracting the data out of the system and formatting it to get in shape to present to your clients. Chose a software that does not stop at simply extracting the information for you, but also helps you by checking the results of the AI analysis, formatting the comments and answers into a client-ready format.

How does the technology fit within your current processes and systems?

A commonly overlooked area of AI legal technology is to see how easily it integrates with your own internal processes. It’s important to check whether the technology enables you to invoice your clients and allows for a smooth billing process. The ideal solution: AI integrated into a Contract Management software or a more complete Legal management software