BEYOND CHATBOTS: HOW SPECIALIZED AI TOOLS ARE REDUCING LEGAL WORKLOADS

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to transform legal practice, moving far beyond simple chatbot assistants. Law firms and legal departments are increasingly deploying specialized AI tools to automate routine and labor-intensive tasks, with the promise of significant efficiency gains. A recent industry survey found that nearly three-quarters of lawyers plan to integrate generative AI into their work within the next year[1]. These lawyers intend to use AI for tasks such as reviewing legal documents, sifting through electronic data, and drafting contracts[2]. This trend reflects growing confidence that AI can shoulder a substantial portion of legal workloads, allowing attorneys to focus on higher-level analytical and advisory work. At the same time, courts and professional bodies have cautioned that AI outputs must be treated with care – an attorney was famously sanctioned for submitting a brief with fictitious AI-generated citations[3]. The dual realities of AI’s potential and its pitfalls have set the stage for a new era in law: one where specialized AI tools perform heavy lifting in research, document analysis, and drafting, while human lawyers provide oversight and expertise.

[1] Stanford HAI & RegLab, AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 Benchmarking Queries, Stanford HAI Blog (May 23, 2024), https://hai.stanford.edu.

[2] L. Moran, 73% of Lawyers Plan to Use Generative AI, Legal Dive (Nov. 20, 2023), https://www.legaldive.com.

[3] Stanford HAI & RegLab, AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 Benchmarking Queries, Stanford HAI Blog (May 23, 2024), https://hai.stanford.edu.