Originally published October 11, 2024

Over the past few years, generative AI (GenAI) has been transforming legal tech—maturing from a novel tool to a critical element in legal workflows and a key selling point for SaaS providers of legal services. From automating legal research to streamlining document drafting, AI is helping law firms and legal departments achieve efficiencies that were previously impossible. However, this transformation comes with significant challenges that require training, management, and mitigations. 

What is legal tech? 

For those not familiar with legal tech as a vertical, legal tech — sometimes written as LegalTech — refers to the use of technology and software to provide legal services, improve legal processes, and enhance the delivery of justice.

Legal tech SaaS companies can be categorized based on their primary users: 

• General or in-house counsel at the enterprise level — these individuals typically focus on compliance management. 
• Law practitioners within firms and independent attorneys.
• Consumers who seek to manage transactional law processes on their own.
• The public sector, including courts, public defenders, prosecutors, probation offices, law enforcement, and jail management.

Legal tech encompasses both the companies and organizations providing legal services as well as the users they serve.

6 Ways GenAI Is Changing Law Practice

In legal tech, GenAI is changing everything from law firms’ business operations to automating transactional law to augmenting attorneys’ investigative and research abilities. Here are six use cases in the market today.

1. Automated Legal Research and Document Review
   GenAI is making legal research faster and more efficient by automating the process of sifting through extensive amounts of unstructured data including text, video, emails, and audio.

   In one example, Thomson Reuters, a leading legal tech provider, has integrated AI into its Westlaw Edge platform. This tool uses AI to provide more precise search results, streamline document review, and offer predictive analytics, enabling lawyers to find relevant case law and legal precedents with greater speed and accuracy.

   In another example, DISCO offers eDiscovery solutions that leverage AI to automate document review, making it easier for legal teams to identify key documents and manage large-scale litigation efficiently​.

2. Contract Management and Analysis
   While the first wave of web-based contract management platforms rose in the early 2000s, contract management is a persistent need and GenAI is advancing the toolset.

   Two organizations using AI to support contract management are DocuSign and Evisort. DocuSign uses AI to make the whole contract process easier, from drafting to compliance checks, with tools like DocuSign Insight that quickly scan contracts for risky clauses and ensure everything’s in order​. 

   Evisort, on the other hand, focuses more on what happens before and after a contract is signed to promote outcomes like deal acceleration. Its AI automatically pulls out key details like renewal dates and obligations, giving businesses a clearer view of their agreements and helping them stay on top of compliance.

   In some cases, law firms may benefit from centering models on in-house data, or from having more control over emergent techniques such as RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), which allows you to train an AI to look at specific data sets when performing certain queries. As such, a number of  larger firms prefer to create their own AI tools for contract generation, like A&O Shearman’s ContractMatrix.  

   Although GenAI can produce initial drafts, advanced models and human-in-the-loop (HITL) techniques further refine and validate outputs.

3. Litigation Prediction and Strategy Development
   GenAI is helping analyze historical case data to predict litigation outcomes and helping law firms develop more effective strategies. For example, part of LexisNexis, Lex Machina, focuses on legal analytics by providing data-driven insights on litigation trends, including the behavior of judges, courts, and opposing counsel. It is widely used by law firms for building case strategies based on past decisions and predicting case outcomes.

4. Virtual Legal Assistance and Document Fulfillment
   Beyond the ubiquitous chatbot, GenAI is enhancing legal services through automated communication and virtual assistance. LegalZoom, a direct-to-consumer legal service provider, uses AI to help clients with document preparation and legal advice, making legal services more accessible and affordable. 

   AI algorithms provide a starting point for functional documents, such as wills and business registration, and their Doc Assist service allows individuals without a law background to quickly interpret complex legal documents and isolate key facts, clauses that may require attention, and common questions to ask the issuer.

5. Courtroom and Emotional Response Simulation
   GenAI can provide courtroom simulations to help legal professionals with trial planning. JuryLab, for example, leverages GenAI to assist with trial planning by simulating jury decision-making. The platform allows attorneys to present case facts and arguments to mock jurors who provide feedback on their likelihood of voting for or against a verdict. 

   By analyzing patterns in jury responses, the AI model helps lawyers refine their strategies before heading to court. This innovative use of GenAI enhances trial preparation by offering insights into how different types of jurors may react to evidence.

6. Practice Management, Business and Legal Operations
   Another great use case for AI is helping law firms optimize their business operations and budgeting processes. Several SaaS companies are already doing this.

   Clio offers AI-driven insights into business performance metrics, helping law firms track billing, revenue, and client engagement more effectively. And Litify provides an all-in-one platform with AI tools for case management, client relationship management (CRM), and financial analytics.

   Litify's AI capabilities enable law firms to forecast revenue, manage expenses, and optimize resource allocation based on historical data and predictive modeling.

Transforming Legal Workflows Through Emerging Technologies

Generative AI has rapidly become a transformative force within legal tech, revolutionizing how law firms and legal departments handle everything from research to client interactions. Its ability to automate complex tasks and provide predictive insights is enabling greater efficiency and accuracy in legal workflows.

With many promising new GenAI players in the legal tech space, it’s important to remember this is just the beginning. Learn about four emerging trends to watch in the industry or contact us for an exploratory conversation.