When it comes to adopting new technologies, the legal sector has traditionally been more cautious than other industries. However, AI’s potential to transform legal workflows and unlock new levels of productivity is difficult to ignore. In fact, the industry is moving at speed: a recent study shows almost three quarters (73 percent) of legal practitioners plan to utilize AI in their legal work within the next year.
On a practical level, AI is evolving so quickly that across many practices, employees have varying levels of knowledge and understanding of how AI works, what tasks they should be using it for and the legal implications of using it. At the same time, if firms introduce AI solutions that require deep technical knowledge to use, skills gaps could become increasingly problematic.
AI skills gaps are inevitable…
AI skills gaps will naturally occur across the vast majority of law firms — like most industries, the legal sector is at the start of an AI revolution. Legal professionals who have been accustomed to following similar processes and workflows across their entire careers understandably have limited working knowledge of AI. They won’t automatically have a deep knowledge of how it works and what it is potentially capable of, and potential risks it could pose.
At the graduate level, AI proficiency is currently mixed. At present there is roughly a 50/50 split between laws schools in the US that offer classes on AI and those that don’t. It is highly likely that law schools will expand their curriculum on AI over time, covering both theoretical and practical learning to ensure that graduates have a grasp of the fundamentals. But is this enough? General education in the application of AI and ethical considerations around the use of the technology is vital. But should firms or departments expect law school graduates to start work on day one with a full understanding of the specific tools, procedures and policies of the firm or department they are joining?
If experience is any guide, law school classes can provide a solid foundation of understanding, but firms and departments will need to be prepared to provide guidance and training on the appropriate use of AI within their organizations.
Overcoming the problem through tech and teams
Firms need to make it easy for both existing employees and the next generation of lawyers to work with AI responsibly and effectively. To make this happen, it’s absolutely crucial they proactively identify use cases where AI can make a tangible impact — for instance, summarizing long documents or drafting contact work at scale.
AI must be properly integrated so it can provide automation at scale, moving beyond smaller scale ‘AI assistants’, which place an onus on users to write prompts or manually enter information. Firms need to make it easy to use AI quickly and easily within security and information governance guardrails — including ensuring the necessary human involvement in tasks and workflows that are assisted by AI. This will prevent law firms from making a range of potential mistakes, from failing to validate outputs AI has generated, to mistakenly sharing confidential information with a third party.
Firms also need to consider team composition across departments, potentially embedding experts in key areas. Broad-brush ‘upskilling’ — requiring every lawyer and support staff member to become a ‘prompt engineer’ is impractical, but firms should still look to develop specialized expertise where necessary. Historically, firms and departments have often looked to IT to provide this kind of technical expertise, but in a world of no-code automation and natural language interfaces, it may be that deep understanding of legal workflows is a higher priority requirement than the limited technical skills required to translate that understanding into automations that can power greater efficiency.
Reaping the rewards
What is clear is that law firms and legal departments cannot confidently assume that law school or any outside organization can close the skills gap for them. They must take proactive action to get the best out of AI. By laying out clear guidelines and use cases, integrating AI into the technology they are using, and creating a strategy for acquiring and/or developing the expertise required, firms can move forward confident that AI will have a positive impact.
Image Credit: wan wei/Shutterstock
Michael Owen Hill is Legal Technology Strategist at NetDocuments.
