7 Corporate Legal Department Strategies for Implementing AI

by lm-admin
on May 8, 2017

By Zach Warren , originally published in Legaltech.

For all the buzz about artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal industry, the technology still hasn’t made its way into many corporate legal departments. In an HBR Consulting survey earlier this year , only 6 percent of corporate legal departments had AI tools or were piloting them. A separate Thomson Reuters survey from 2017 found that although 67 percent were open to new technology adoption, half were not interested in purchasing AI or AI-based tools.

But that doesn’t mean AI is non-existent in corporate legal departments. A few first adopters are applying AI in various capacities. Here’s a look at what Legaltech News, Corporate Counsel and Law.com have uncovered so far in 2018 about where AI is beginning to find its way into the law department of the future.

Excerpt from article slide show:

Walmart

Alan Bryan, senior associate general counsel of Walmart, said that at his company, encouraging adoption means demonstrating value. “I’d rather the attorney spend four more hours preparing for the critical deposition and adding value that way,” Bryan explained at the 2018 CLOC Conference. That’s why the company has shifted its initial discovery system to one powered by AI software company LegalMation, where the first drafts of answers to litigation and the initial round of discovery requests are automated to complete in about two minutes. Bryan estimated that Wal-Mart’s lawyers are seeing between 60 and 80 percent time savings on routine tasks.

Platform Overview

LegalMation provides a suite of Artificial Intelligence tools to help practicing attorneys and legal professionals automate routine litigation tasks. Unlike existing template generators and form-fillers, LegalMation's ground-breaking AI system is able to dynamically produce responsive pleadings, discovery requests, discovery responses, and related documents that are tailored to the claims, allegations, and requests in the legal document uploaded, incorporating jurisdictional requirements as well as the attorney’s own style, formatting, and response strategy. Developed by a passionate group of award-winning litigators and highly accomplished software developers, LegalMation is focused on liberating litigators to allow them to focus on more valuable tasks in their practice..

LegalMation distinguishes itself from other Artificial Intelligence products in several key aspects.:

LegalMation is the first Artificial Intelligence company to focus solely on using AI to automate and enhance litigation tasks.

LegalMation uses cutting-edge AI to power its platform and, unlike some other legal tech platforms, LegalMation requires no human involvement to generate its output.

LegalMation is not a template generator, form-filler, or other Q&A-driven tool. Rather, our A.I. solutions generate actual work product--caliber drafts of legal documents comparable to that of an attorney or legal professional that only require minor editing and basic review before filing/serving. Drafting these documents from scratch often takes an associate attorney or paralegal an entire day, but our products can produce comparable high-quality drafts in mere minutes.

LegalMation’s solutions are ready to use out-of-the-box. You can be up and running on our platform in a matter of minutes.

LegalMation’s solutions are fully customizable to your needs. LegalMation can customize the style, content, and strategy behind how its output is created to mirror your current output.

LegalMation’s solutions are easy to use and require no computer knowledge besides how to use a mouse and keyboard. Our products are browser-based; there is nothing to download or install. The interface is simple and clean, and designed to be accessible to even the least tech-savvy. As a result, the adoption cost for integrating LegalMation to an existing organization's workflow is very, very low.

Corporate In-House Case Study

A leading global retail giant achieves significant savings on legal fees on its high-volume litigation matters using LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool.

The Legal Operations group of a leading global retailer with significant litigation volume across the country was searching for technology tools to increase efficiency and consistency on its litigation matters, lower its legal spend, and obtain more value from outside counsel. Working with LegalMation, the retailer identified two litigation areas with large volume where the deployment of LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool could have a significant impact: employment and premises liability tort litigation.
The retailer conducted a pilot of LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool by asking select outside counsel to run complaints through the LegalMation Complaint Analysis tool and compare the outputs to those generated by the firm’s typical workflow. LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool was able to generate an answer, requests for production and interrogatories that were almost identical to those generated by outside counsel and tailored to the facts and allegations of each.
Today, this global retailer has made LegalMation an integral part of its workflow and case assignment process. When a new lawsuit is served on the retailer in one of the jurisdictions where LegalMation operates, an in-house paralegal runs the complaint through LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool and sends the output, consisting of an answer, requests for production, interrogatories, and other jurisdiction or firm-specific output to the selected outside counsel for the matter. Outside counsel then bills the retailer solely for the time spent reviewing and editing this initial output which generates significant savings for the global retailer.

Challenge

Increasing budgetary pressure to lower outside counsel legal fees

Obtain more value from hours billed by outside counsel

Lack of consistency in work product and quality from outside counsel

Solution

Deploy LegalMation internally to generate initial draft responsive documents in minutes

Integrate LegalMation into its initial case assignment process

Results

Up to 80% savings on outside counsel legal fees on key early stage litigation document drafting.

Reallocation of outside counsel time away from process/routine work to higher value strategic tasks.

Increased consistency and quality in work product

Large Firm Case Study

An Am Law 100 labor and employment law firm was searching for ways to become more competitive and capture more market share

Handling over 5,000 employment related litigation matters per year across the country, the Am Law 100 law firm (the “Firm”) needed a quantifiable solution to lower its servicing costs and provide more value to its national clients. The Firm engaged in extensive testing of LegalMation’s platform across multiple offices to determine its effectiveness.
Using LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool, the Firm was able to reduce the attorney time spent preparing answers, affirmative defenses, and initial written discovery (requests for production, interrogatories, and other jurisdiction-specific requests) from an average of 6-8 hours per matter, to less than 1 hour (including review time by an attorney). The Firm tested LegalMation’s tools across multiple types of employment cases across various jurisdictions and concluded that the resulting draft documents were not only produced incredibly fast, but were also consistent in quality.
Today, the Firm is able to offer more competitive proposals for its volume matters, which in turn allows it to obtain additional work from national clients.

Challenge
Downward price pressure in high-volume, lower-exposure matters
Making Alternative Fee Arrangements more competitive and yet more profitable
Differentiate from competitors during marketing pitches
Lack of work product consistency from associates/paralegals
Solution
Integrate LegalMation into volume litigation matters in the Firm’s busiest offices
Results
Up to 80% time savings on key litigation tasks
Higher profit margins on volume matters, particularly those on AFAs
More distinctive marketing
Higher levels of associate satisfaction

SMALL LAW Firm Case Study

A high-caliber general litigation boutique reduced paralegal and associate time and money expended on key early litigation tasks by 75%+

A general litigation boutique with around 40 attorneys needed to cut costs in order to stay competitive in a very crowded local market and also sought to minimize reliance on support staff.
Using LegalMation’s platform, the boutique law firm was able to reduce the attorney (and paralegal) time spent preparing answers, initial discovery (requests for production and interrogatories), and discovery responses, including objections, from several hours per matter, to less than 1 hour (including review time by a supervising attorney). The boutique firm tested LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool and Discovery Analysis tool across multiple practice areas and concluded that the resulting draft documents were not only produced incredibly fast but also with consistency and quality similar to its own junior attorneys and paralegals. In particular, the boutique law frim, which did not have the luxury of a large support staff, found LegalMation’s Discovery Request tool particularly helpful in dealing with burdensome discovery requests served on its clients.
Today, the boutique law firm is able to offer more competitive proposals for its matters and through the efficiency gained by LegalMation’s platform compete against national law firms with more resources.

Challenge
Downward price pressure due to a crowded local market
Limited associate/paralegal resources to handle routine drafting tasks
Compete against national law firms with more resources
Differentiate from competitors during marketing pitches
Lack of work product consistency from associates/paralegals
Solution
Deploy LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool to generate initial draft responsive pleadings, and the Discovery Analysis tool to quickly generate shells and responsive objections throughout the life of a case
Results
70-85% time savings on key litigation tasks
Higher profit margins on volume matters, particularly those on AFAs
More distinctive marketing
Higher levels of associate satisfaction
Reduced staff overtime

Success Story

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James M. Lee

Co-Founder & CEO

James M. Lee is co-founder and CEO of LegalMation. He is a founding partner of LTL Attorneys LLP, a nationally recognized litigation boutique. As an experienced litigator, he has tried numerous cases in federal and state courts. He has been recognized as a top business litigator by various legal publications including the National Law Journal. James has served as lead counsel to a number of Fortune and multinational clients including Wal-Mart, Thomson Reuters, Symantec, and VIZIO. He was formerly associated with litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel before co-founding LTL Attorneys. He is a frequent and noted speaker and commentator in the field of AI and innovations in the field of law. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, and his B.S. from the University of Southern California. At LegalMation, James serves as the key driver of the Company’s vision and strategy.

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Insurance COMPANY Case Study

A national insurance carrier achieves significant savings on its high-volume, low exposure litigation matters through its adoption of LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool

A national insurance carrier with significant litigation volume across the country for its insureds, was searching for technology, tools, and processes to increase efficiency on its litigation matters to lower its litigation costs. This national insurance carrier partnered with LegalMation to identify an area of litigation where LegalMation could have a significant and immediate impact and decided to deploy LegalMation’s Complaint Analysis tool for all of its third-party motor vehicle tort litigation.
LegalMation worked closely with the national insurance carrier to customize the output from its platform to generate documents that mirrored the current output of the national insurance carrier’s attorneys and paralegals. LegalMation was able to automate the creation of an answer, requests for production of documents, interrogatories, requests for admissions, and deposition notices, all tailored to the facts and allegations of each complaint and almost indistinguishable from those manually created by the insurance company’s attorneys and paralegals. LegalMation was able to generate this output in 2-3 minutes—a significant time savings over the insurance company’s prior practice for generating this output.
Following a pilot program consisting of processing all of its complaints for a single jurisdiction through LegalMation, the national insurance company made LegalMation an integral part of its workflow for all jurisdictions where LegalMation currently operates. In these jurisdictions, when a new motor vehicle-related lawsuit is served on the insurance company or its insureds, the assigned counsel or paralegal runs the complaint through the LegalMation Complaint Analysis tool, downloads the initial outputs, which are then reviewed by the attorney or paralegal and finalized, all within a few minutes.

Challenge

Increasing budgetary pressure to lower legal spend on defense of insureds

Obtain more value from staff counsel

Reduce legal secretary/paralegal overtime

Solution

Deploy LegalMation internally so staff/captive counsel can generate initial response draft documents in minutes

Results

Up to 80% time savings on key litigation tasks

Reallocation of staff/captive counsel time away from process/volume work to higher value strategic tasks

Increased consistency and quality in work product

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