How 3 New Legal AI Tools Will Strengthen Firms

As use cases continue to emerge for artificial intelligence in the legal industry, LEAP Legal Software is expanding its practice and document management capabilities with a trio of AI-driven tools. 

LEAP notes that the new products hold the promise of a better bottom line for the firms that adopt them.

The tools will particularly make time-consuming administrative tasks far easier, freeing up lawyers to focus on the high-level work, client service, and business development critical to their success.

Here, we sit down with Poppy Bale Dyer, CEO of LEAP, who sheds light on how firms are already using this emerging technology, along with her hopes for the future of AI adoption. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.) 

ATL: Congratulations on the launch of your new products. To start, can you walk us through each one and the thinking behind its development? 

PBD: Yes, of course. We’re introducing three exciting legal AI products.

The first is called Generator, which accelerates your document drafting. It allows you to describe the type of document that you want to create, and then it generates it based on various sources, existing templates that you have (letters or emails) or composes a version through AI. 

The second product is LawY, which is an AI legal assistant. The lawyer asks a question about anything to do with a case, or any kind of jurisdiction-type question, and they get an instant response. The unique value of LawY is that you can take the response that you receive and have it verified by a practicing lawyer. You get the instant response, which is generated through AI, and if you want to double-check its accuracy, you click a “verify” button, and it gets reviewed and verified by a dedicated attorney.

The third latest innovation is Matter AI. LEAP is a matter-centric platform. When you are working in a matter, Matter AI allows you to find key information based on the documents, data, or dates stored in LEAP. We know that lawyers have hundreds of thousands of documents or emails, which can be difficult to navigate, particularly if you’re trying to find something quickly. Matter AI allows you to ask a question about the data in plain English, and you get a response in seconds. 

What problems faced by lawyers do these new products directly address? What new benefits do they bring? 

I think, realistically, AI’s not here to try and diminish anybody’s role. 

We’re not trying to replace people. I don’t think anybody that’s creating AI is trying to do that. I think what they’re really trying to do is enhance their capabilities. 

We now have a suite of premium AI tools that enable people to focus on higher-value tasks. 

We’re trying to get rid of human error and minimize the routine or repetitive tasks that lawyers can find quite frustrating.

Lawyers actually want to be there to help people. In my opinion, that’s what AI is going to allow them to do. It’s going to speed up those menial tasks, so you’re not spending hours searching through documents trying to find different things. 

Essentially, you just get your job done a lot quicker.

From the lawyer’s perspective, could you walk us through a specific use case of how the addition of these tools to the LEAP platform could change what they’d encounter in their day-to-day? 

These AI products have gone through extensive testing, and two of our LEAP firms shared their positive experiences.

The first firm was dealing with a family law matter, and they used Matter AI to identify discrepancies in the financial information in each party’s documents. That comparison took seconds, compared to conventional data comparison. 

The second firm encountered a communication breakdown with one of their clients. Their client claimed that they had not been told that a meeting had been scheduled. The attorney was then able to pull up the exact email using Matter AI with the update in seconds, send it back to the client, and say, “There you go.” Problem solved.

It’s common for attorneys to only bill on average two to four hours a day, but they’re working 10-15 hours. By utilizing AI, we are decreasing the tedious administrative work and lawyers can then focus on applying their legal expertise.

A lot of the conventional wisdom says lawyers can be incentivized to be inefficient because of the hourly model. The idea that becoming more efficient will actually increase billable hours is pretty interesting. Could you elaborate a little on how that works? 

If you’re more efficient, you can take on more work. 

Oftentimes, lawyers cannot dedicate time to growing their business because they just don’t have enough hours in the day. 

In an ideal situation, you need to be taking on more clients, and you can’t do so when dealing with menial admin tasks that you’re not getting paid for. And when we go and speak to lawyers, generally, that’s what they’ve noticed as well. 

They tend to become about 30% more efficient when they’re using LEAP even before our latest AI enhancements. The rapid adoption of these AI tools has been unprecedented in LEAP’s history, and LEAP firms that have implemented AI have noted that it’s making them more efficient already. 

We are excited to see how much more efficient a LEAP lawyer will be, how the quality of client services will improve, and how much more money a lawyer’s able to make because of these tools. 

One blocker I see with legal technology is just the effort it takes to onboard a new system. If you’re a lawyer seeing all these big, cutting-edge AI solutions and you’re still working off of spreadsheets, how would you progress toward a tech stack that includes advanced tools like generative AI?  

Ten years ago, we were the first practice management solution to move to the cloud, and there was a lot of resistance. 

AI is definitely the next technological progression, and it’s probably going to meet the same criticism.

In a year’s time, AI will be adopted by many other industries, and I have no doubt that 10 years down the line, the adoption of AI will be ingrained in daily practice. Of course, by then, we will be discussing concerns about the next set of technological advancements.

When it comes to adopting AI technology, as a new or existing LEAP client, it’s not intrinsically difficult.

We’ve designed the tools to be intuitive, which makes benefitting from these features easy.

I’m also curious about the blue-sky scenario. What are the ways these new products could ultimately advance goals that are fundamental to a firm’s mission, like the bottom line, client service, or business development? 

It’s about time and profitability. 

We’re trying to cut down the unnecessary admin time so that lawyers can do the most important part of their job, which is to help people. By connecting lawyers with the key information about their cases, firms can better serve their clients and grow their business. 

These enhancements, helping law firms to become more efficient and to expand their practice, are the key benefits of using our new legal AI products.