Legal AI Can Create Cognitive Space for Practitioners

The legal services industry is no stranger to the risk of human error, especially when coupled with high pressure, late nights, long hours and complex documents. It’s a perfect storm for mistakes at high reputational cost and we’ve all made them. The latest discourse that shiny new technology – whether in the broadening AI bucket or not – can skip along with lawyers and their experienced nuance hand in hand, eliminating risk with every line of proof or code respectively, is farcical. 

But we’re not far off, skipping aside.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be another article about how AI can do repetitive work and we can revert to experienced, creative, nuanced work - I think we’ve reached that point and exhausted it. That’s not to say that the concept doesn’t hold water. Still, instead, we need to start taking a closer look at the rule book and be a little less distinct about the roles of humans and technology, especially as they become even more intertwined as innovations advance. 

I had an interesting conversation recently, based on the notion that “AI doesn’t need coffee,” which struck a note. The concept of error is pervasive in the legal industry, as we well know and let’s face it, even the sharpest legal minds are susceptible to fatigue and oversight. After hours of poring over dense contracts, the most diligent lawyer might miss a crucial clause or misinterpret a key term. It's not a reflection of competence but a reality of human cognitive limitations. And in the high-stakes world of law, these errors can have significant consequences.

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Even with the advent of technology, we still need coffee breaks. We still get tired eyes from staring at screens, miss glaring errors and hit a 3 pm energy slump. The media discourse has instead positioned AI as a powerful ally in precision through its lack of caffeine dependence, heralded as alleviating some of this volume pressure and reducing the risk of error. With the right training, your AI sidekick maintains consistent performance, whether greeted with the first or thousandth document of the day. 

The problem is, that this has become a rather conflated topic. AI isn’t prone to human error but it is prone to errors of its own and because of that, a lack of trust to deploy it for some of those particularly critical tasks becomes apparent. With business case owners scrabbling to find vanity metrics and justify investment into the unknown, the hesitance is clear and as a result, the process becomes self-fulfilling. Suddenly, AI isn’t living up to its flighty promises and no one feels truly comfortable with their AI partner. 

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It’s not about pitching our abilities up against that of an AI or piece of technology or automation. Could AI actually be a little bit better than us, if we trained it and we let it? Maybe. Lawyers pride themselves on being precise and being problem solvers. Now technology can solve problems in a more repeatable way, why wouldn’t we accept that and use it as a way to unlock our higher-value tasks for clients?

This is more about sharing the load and working out where technology can pick up some of the slack and complete tasks with greater efficiency and repeatability, allowing us to go and get our coffee, take the dog for a walk, take a break and recalibrate and solve the knottier problems in the meantime. That means that we can elevate what we can deliver as lawyers in terms of client service and do more, with greater precision. That’s something that we weren’t previously able to do. 

But let's be clear: No technology is infallible. It's a tool and like any tool, its effectiveness depends on how it's designed and used. The margin for error is different, too; even if the likelihood of error is far lower, the magnitude could be far greater and often difficult to detect. That’s why we’re not as worried about the robot takeover, either. With the right dynamics, it’s more of a partnership, combining AI precision with legal expertise. 

The barrier to the adoption of AI in a legal setting is that it needs to have demonstrated its ability to do something better than a human could. Otherwise, it’s just creating more work. Tool fatigue is a challenge and adopting new technology into your day-to-day must prove its value to be effective. 

Looking ahead, yes, we're moving towards a future where AI and human lawyers work in tandem, each complementing the other's strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. The key is to enable that symbiosis and integrate AI into workflows more confidently. While AI handles the data-intensive, repetitive tasks prone to human error, lawyers have the toolkit, reasoning and experience to focus on aspects of legal work that require human judgment and empathy.

AI might not need coffee to maintain peak performance but it does need human guidance to reach its full potential in legal work. 

Lawyers aren’t averse to using technology - but it needs to prove its worth first, just like a legal professional would. Once it becomes clear that it can and has, solved real problems,  we can fundamentally change the pace at which lawyers can work and their ability to get that work done. By embracing this partnership between human expertise and AI capabilities, we can create a legal industry that's not only more efficient but also more accurate and reliable. The future of law isn't about replacing humans with machines but about creating superhuman legal professionals who can survive the occasional late-night oversight.