There’s understandable concern that AI is replacing in-house legal jobs. Whether it’s increasing layoffs, reducing headcount, or shifting resources and priorities, the potential of AI tools has impacted everyone’s role.
AI is already replacing my job without firing me (for now). Legal executives expect the work of in-house legal teams to start and end with AI tools. This expectation makes sense given that a key role of legal executives is to use legal costs efficiently, and AI tools have the most appealing potential to reduce time and costs on research, contract drafting, case management, providing guidance, and other projects.
The problem is that in-house lawyers do not need legal executives to remind them that AI tools exist. We need legal executives to do what they are best at, removing hurdles to any solution that can streamline our work, whether AI-based or not. Doing so will free up energy for lawyers to work on tasks that truly require an AI tool.
Here are three ways legal executives should work to increase AI adoption among their teams.
Favor the most effective approach, not “AI approaches”
Legal executives going “What about AI?” to every problem risks fostering an environment where teams feel pressured to center AI in every solution. My colleagues and I have seen firsthand how amazing solutions sit on the backburner as legal executives pivot to AI. This overreliance could hinder lawyers’ ability to think critically about what parts of a team’s work should be changed.
We don’t need ChatGPT to perform math a calculator can accomplish. The same logic should apply to legal practice. AI tools might take longer to implement, present new risks, address only part of the problem, or fail to adapt to the changing needs of the company. We can streamline hours-intensive processes with non-AI tools such as fillable forms, business-facing guidance, and precedent repositories. In fact, the best solution to a lawyer-intensive process may be to accept the risks of not doing parts of the process at all or allowing business teams to manage the process alone.
Accept “AI-lite” approaches
Legal executives should not expect an AI-based approach to replace an entire process as it exists. Few streamlining solutions in legal practice involve a single tool or else we would have come up with it sooner. For many automation tools available before large language models, lawyers had to adjust processes and standards to meet those automation tools where they were.
We didn’t refuse to lay tracks for trains. So, AI solutions will require both human and AI inputs. To start using AI tools to draft some contracts, you should first simplify the contracting forms and processes down to something digestible and then use AI tools in places where they are less likely to fail. To start using AI tools to conduct research or draft a memo for me, I might still run that research by outside counsel to confirm the sources and point out any considerations I missed.
Develop a legal technology team focused on AI Adoption
Many legal executives require their teams, on top of their typical workload, to come up with AI solutions independently despite insufficient training, guidance, and resources. The in-house AI training and guidance for many of my colleagues involve a group call about how one person used an AI tool from a list of approved AI tools (often inferior to unapproved AI tools) to improve one aspect of their job. That’s great for them. Although a bottom-up approach to discovering AI solutions allows in-house lawyers to look closely at how to streamline their own tasks, we still need top-down coordination to efficiently implement AI tools at the pace expected from legal executives.
Imagine a company where every in-house legal team sought their own outside counsel or legal technology for research, case, and contract management with zero coordination. We would consider that company prone to inconsistent standards and time-intensive redundancies in their work. That is why most large companies dedicate internal and external professionals to maintaining and improving in-house legal teams’ relationships with outside counsel and legal technology.
We would never expect in-house legal teams to adopt law firms and other legal technology without any top-down coordination, so why should 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.
The post How AI Should Replace My In-House Law Job appeared first on Above the Law.
There’s understandable concern that AI is replacing in-house legal jobs. Whether it’s increasing layoffs, reducing headcount, or shifting resources and priorities, the potential of AI tools has impacted everyone’s role.
AI is already replacing my job without firing me (for now). Legal executives expect the work of in-house legal teams to start and end with AI tools. This expectation makes sense given that a key role of legal executives is to use legal costs efficiently, and AI tools have the most appealing potential to reduce time and costs on research, contract drafting, case management, providing guidance, and other projects.
The problem is that in-house lawyers do not need legal executives to remind them that AI tools exist. We need legal executives to do what they are best at, removing hurdles to any solution that can streamline our work, whether AI-based or not. Doing so will free up energy for lawyers to work on tasks that truly require an AI tool.
Here are three ways legal executives should work to increase AI adoption among their teams.
Favor the most effective approach, not “AI approaches”
Legal executives going “What about AI?” to every problem risks fostering an environment where teams feel pressured to center AI in every solution. My colleagues and I have seen firsthand how amazing solutions sit on the backburner as legal executives pivot to AI. This overreliance could hinder lawyers’ ability to think critically about what parts of a team’s work should be changed.
We don’t need ChatGPT to perform math a calculator can accomplish. The same logic should apply to legal practice. AI tools might take longer to implement, present new risks, address only part of the problem, or fail to adapt to the changing needs of the company. We can streamline hours-intensive processes with non-AI tools such as fillable forms, business-facing guidance, and precedent repositories. In fact, the best solution to a lawyer-intensive process may be to accept the risks of not doing parts of the process at all or allowing business teams to manage the process alone.
Accept “AI-lite” approaches
Legal executives should not expect an AI-based approach to replace an entire process as it exists. Few streamlining solutions in legal practice involve a single tool or else we would have come up with it sooner. For many automation tools available before large language models, lawyers had to adjust processes and standards to meet those automation tools where they were.
We didn’t refuse to lay tracks for trains. So, AI solutions will require both human and AI inputs. To start using AI tools to draft some contracts, you should first simplify the contracting forms and processes down to something digestible and then use AI tools in places where they are less likely to fail. To start using AI tools to conduct research or draft a memo for me, I might still run that research by outside counsel to confirm the sources and point out any considerations I missed.
Develop a legal technology team focused on AI Adoption
Many legal executives require their teams, on top of their typical workload, to come up with AI solutions independently despite insufficient training, guidance, and resources. The in-house AI training and guidance for many of my colleagues involve a group call about how one person used an AI tool from a list of approved AI tools (often inferior to unapproved AI tools) to improve one aspect of their job. That’s great for them. Although a bottom-up approach to discovering AI solutions allows in-house lawyers to look closely at how to streamline their own tasks, we still need top-down coordination to efficiently implement AI tools at the pace expected from legal executives.
Imagine a company where every in-house legal team sought their own outside counsel or legal technology for research, case, and contract management with zero coordination. We would consider that company prone to inconsistent standards and time-intensive redundancies in their work. That is why most large companies dedicate internal and external professionals to maintaining and improving in-house legal teams’ relationships with outside counsel and legal technology.
We would never expect in-house legal teams to adopt law firms and other legal technology without any top-down coordination, so why should 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.
The post How AI Should Replace My In-House Law Job appeared first on Above the Law.
