Since the inception of AI, many have been concerned that AI machines and systems will displace workers and render some roles useless. By now, most industries have come to understand that AI is extremely beneficial to nearly every work environment and should be incorporated widely. The reality is that as the tech-driven world advances, those who refuse to adapt will be left behind. This is true for every industry, including the legal field which, due to its historic hesitation to risk with adopting new technology, is now at a crossroads. Either adopt AI or fall behind.
At the same time, it’s also true that AI does not displace workers but empower them. Research and evidence show AI can perform labor-intensive tasks, allowing general counsels to focus on more strategic work.
Let’s explore how AI is being used as a tool by corporate counsels and legal teams and why it’s time to adopt this technology.
How AI Speeds up the Contract Management Process
Contracts are essential to every corporation, big and small. The average Fortune 2000 company has between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts at any given time and contracts for smaller organizations are just as important. Careful management and organization of these contracts is paramount for running a successful business.
Among the most time consuming roles for a legal team is the manual review and management of contracts with tools like Excel or SharePoint. Reading through and organizing contracts, staying on top of important dates and making changes to errors takes copious amounts of time and effort. In fact, according to The American Lawyer, it takes an average 92 minutes to review a contract. This is simply not enough time to quickly make the rapid decisions and updates necessary in a fast-paced business environment.
With AI, manual review can be completed by machines, alone. Gartner predicts that by 2023, 40 percent of Infrastructure and Operations teams will use AI-augmented automation in large enterprises, which will result in higher IT productivity, and greater agility and scalability. AI capabilities will assist corporate legal departments by allowing them to point their attention towards higher level tasks, utilizing the skills they went to school for and have honed for years. As such, the adoption of AI-based solutions can reduce the time spent on manual contract review by 50 percent by 2024.
The Responsibility of Legal Teams
As mentioned earlier, many have an adverse reaction to new technology, fearing that it will harm them and their job security. With AI, this simply isn’t the case for the corporate counsel. Legal teams have an obligation to their organization to produce consistent and fast work, to facilitate business growth and avoid risk. AI technology helps teams meet these expectations in their day-to-day work.
In the ongoing debate between those who want to adopt new technology and those who resist, the latter will always fall behind. The legal industry as a whole is already generally behind the tech curve but it’s not too late for corporate counsels. It’s time for legal teams to improve their ability to serve their organizations. It’s time for legal teams to leverage best practices which invariably means employing artificial intelligence.
As Chief Operating Officer, Viraj Chaudhary leads ContractPodAi’s operations at global level and is in charge of ensuring maximum value creation for the company’s key stakeholders across various functions including product development, projects, talent acquisition and resource management.
