Where We Are Now: A Year In The Growth Of GAI In Legal Ops 

Generative AI (GAI) is revolutionizing the legal industry, transforming once tedious tasks into streamlined, efficient processes and opening new frontiers in legal operations. As a Legal Tech Analyst and AI Specialist at UpLevel Ops, I’ve seen firsthand the electrifying impact of GAI, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in legal workflows. This article reviews how far we’ve come with GAI in legal operations in the past year, uncovering key advancements, benefits, challenges, and the promising future that lies ahead.

The adoption of GAI in legal departments and law firms has accelerated over the past year. Initially met with skepticism, GAI tools are now integral to many legal operations, particularly in areas like knowledge management, document automation, and client interactions. Legal teams are mainly focused on leveraging GAI to automate simple, repetitive tasks, thereby freeing up time for more strategic activities.

Rundown of Technological Advancements in GAI Over the Past Year

User-friendly Interfaces – Modern GAI interfaces have become increasingly user-friendly, enhancing usability for legal professionals. These interfaces are designed to be intuitive, allowing users to interact with and even create their own GAI tools without extensive technical knowledge. This democratization of AI technology means that more legal professionals can leverage GAI in their workflows, fostering greater adoption and innovation within legal departments.

Multiple Releases of Base AI Models – Over the past year, there have been multiple releases of base AI models from various companies, each more powerful than the last. These models have shown remarkable improvements in performance, making them well-suited for a wide range of tasks. The competition among AI companies has created a “horse race” for the top spot, driving continuous enhancements. As a result, these releases will continue to make AI systems perform closer to perfection over time, providing increasingly robust tools for legal professionals.

Improved Capabilities – The capabilities of GAI have expanded significantly. Improvements include reduced hallucinations, increased math and reasoning skills, and the ability to handle larger amounts of information. Additionally, the cost of computing has decreased, making these advanced tools more accessible to a broader audience. These enhancements mean that GAI can now tackle more complex tasks with greater efficiency and accuracy, providing substantial benefits in legal operations.

Multimodal Models – New AI models have become multimodal, meaning they can read and understand text, video, images, and audio. These models can also respond via voice, adding a new dimension to AI interactions. This multimodal capability allows legal professionals to use AI in more diverse and dynamic ways, such as analyzing video evidence, reviewing audio recordings, or drafting documents based on spoken input.

Transparency and Communication 

There has been a notable increase in transparency and communication from AI vendors regarding how data is being used and how AI models are being trained. This transparency is crucial for building trust among legal professionals, who must ensure that their use of AI complies with ethical standards and data privacy regulations. By understanding the underlying mechanisms and data usage policies, legal teams can make more informed decisions about integrating AI into their operations.

Opportunity for Legal Operations Professionals

The most successful GAI implementations we have seen by legal departments and law firms so far involve combining multiple stand-alone tools to address various GAI needs. For example, integrating legal chatbots with sophisticated legal research tools like Harvey or AI CoCounsel can create powerful, comprehensive solutions for complex legal tasks requiring a high level of accuracy and security. At the same time, there should be initiatives focused solely on adoption and AI experimentation to educate the legal team. This type of initiative is best handled using user-friendly GAI tools such as GPTs or Copilot to fulfill simple administrative use cases. Providing a safe and forgiving environment for exploration will help speed up the adoption and acceptance of the technology. 

If your company or IT team has blocks or bans on GAI tools due to security or control concerns, you might want to recommend to leadership that they consider implementing a GAI shield tool that can provide more transparency and security regarding  GAI use. These shields include features like audit trails and detailed use instructions for each tool, ensuring that all interactions are monitored and compliant with security policies. Banning tools such as ChatGPT will only hurt adoption efforts at these companies, especially since we have seen employees ignoring these bans and creating personal accounts to continue using these tools.

Focus for the Next Year

GAI will continue to revolutionize legal operations, offering significant benefits in efficiency, productivity, and knowledge management. While challenges remain, the advancements in GAI technology and the support from professional groups make it an exciting time for legal departments to explore and adopt these tools. By embracing GAI, legal teams can stay ahead of the curve, drive innovation, and provide greater value to their organizations. Here are key areas to focus on in the next year:

• Aim for 100% Adoption: Strive to achieve full adoption within your team, emphasizing adoption rather than tracking productivity at this stage.

• Accessibility for All: Ensure every legal department and law firm, regardless of size or budget, has access to the necessary support and resources for successful GAI integration.

• Sharing and Learning: Facilitate a network of AI adopters to share use cases and best practices, fostering a collaborative environment for mutual support and learning.

• First Step Towards Transformation: Recognize this adoption journey as the first step towards a transformative way of working, driven by innovation and collaboration.

• Acknowledging the Inevitable: Acknowledge that everyone will need to go through this process sooner or later. Use statistics to demonstrate the importance and inevitability of this transition.

• Promising Outlook: Emphasize the promising outlook for those who adopt and advance with GAI, highlighting the potential for revolutionizing legal operations and providing greater value to organizations.

By focusing on these strategies, legal professionals can fully leverage the advancements in GAI to transform their workflows, enhance productivity, and drive innovation. The journey towards widespread GAI adoption is inevitable, and those who embrace this change will find themselves at the forefront of a new era in legal operations.