There is a growing level of concern within the legal community that artificial intelligence is taking over in-house legal positions. This trend is evident through increasing layoffs, a reduction in overall headcount, and a shift in resources and priorities. The capabilities of AI tools are reshaping the roles of legal professionals, impacting their responsibilities and workflows across the board.
Interestingly, I have personally felt the effects of AI on my job without facing termination (at least for the moment). Legal executives are beginning to expect that the responsibilities of in-house legal teams will begin and end with the utilization of AI tools. This expectation is logical as one of the primary objectives of legal leaders is to optimize legal costs, and AI tools present a compelling opportunity to save time and reduce expenses related to tasks like research, contract drafting, case management, and providing legal guidance, among other projects.
The real issue is that in-house lawyers do not require legal executives to remind them of the existence of AI tools. Instead, we need legal executives to focus on what they excel at: eliminating obstacles to solutions that can enhance our work processes, whether those solutions are AI-based or not. By doing this, legal executives can allow lawyers to concentrate on tasks that genuinely necessitate the capabilities of AI tools.
Here are three strategies that legal executives should adopt to promote AI adoption within their teams.
Prioritize Effective Solutions Over Solely AI-Centric Approaches
When legal executives continually ask, “What about AI?” in response to every problem, they risk creating a culture where teams feel compelled to revolve around AI for every solution. My colleagues and I have witnessed many innovative solutions being sidelined as legal executives pivot their focus entirely to AI. This excessive dependence on AI could stifle lawyers’ critical thinking skills regarding which aspects of a team’s workflow truly need alteration.
There is no need for ChatGPT to perform basic arithmetic that a simple calculator can handle. The same rationale should extend to the practice of law. AI tools may take longer to implement, introduce new risks, address only portions of the problem, or fail to adapt to the evolving requirements of the organization. We can optimize time-consuming processes using non-AI tools like fillable forms, business-oriented guidance, and precedent repositories. In fact, the most effective solution to a lawyer-intensive process may involve acknowledging the risks of omitting certain steps or allowing business teams to manage the process independently.
Embrace “AI-lite” Strategies for Legal Processes
Legal executives must not anticipate that an AI-driven approach can fully replace existing processes in their entirety. Few effective streamlining solutions in the legal field rely on a single tool; otherwise, we would have discovered them much earlier. Historically, many automation tools that predated large language models required lawyers to adapt their processes and standards to align with the capabilities of those tools.
We did not resist laying tracks for trains; therefore, AI solutions will necessitate collaboration between human input and AI capabilities. To begin utilizing AI tools for drafting certain contracts, it is essential first to simplify the contracting forms and workflows to a manageable level, then apply AI in areas where it is less likely to encounter failure. For instance, when employing AI tools for research or drafting a memo, I might still consult outside counsel to verify the sources and highlight any considerations I may have overlooked.
Create a Dedicated Legal Technology Team to Enhance AI Adoption
Numerous legal executives expect their teams, in addition to their regular workload, to independently develop AI solutions, despite a lack of adequate training, guidance, and resources. The in-house training and guidance on AI for many of my colleagues often amounts to a group call discussing how one individual used an approved AI tool (which is often inferior to unapproved options) to enhance one aspect of their role. While a grassroots approach to uncovering AI solutions allows in-house lawyers to examine how to improve their own tasks, we still require top-down coordination to effectively implement AI tools at the pace anticipated by legal executives.
Consider a scenario where every in-house legal team sought their own outside counsel or legal technology for research, case management, and contract management without any form of coordination. We would view that organization as being vulnerable to inconsistent standards and time-consuming redundancies in their operations. This is why most large companies allocate internal and external professionals to maintain and enhance the relationships between in-house legal teams and outside counsel as well as legal technology.
We would never envision in-house legal teams adopting law firms and other legal technologies without some form of top-down oversight, so why should the approach to AI be any different?
Earl Grey (not his real name) is an in-house attorney at a Fortune 500 tech company. You can reach him by email at earl.grey.opines@gmail.com.
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