It’s no secret that lawyers have numerous time-consuming processes they regularly have to endure when drafting and reviewing legal documents. Writing, editing, and reviewing a single document or report can take several hours, if not days. 

Thankfully, the amount of time legal professionals have to spend doing so has been cut drastically thanks to the advent of AI. There’s no question that AI can make reviewing legal documents and counterparty documents more efficient. However, there is a significant question as to whether it can do as accurately and to the same level of quality as a legal professional could. 

In this article, we’ll dive in greater depth into how legal professionals have been utilizing AI to review legal documents, as well as some of the most common issues that lawyers regularly encounter in the process. 

Then, with that information in mind, we’ll cover exactly how AI can support the legal review process and how LexCheck can be used to help first-round review. 

How Have Legal Professionals Been Using AI To Create Legal Documents?

Lawyers regularly use AI to help review legal documents such as briefs, leases, wills, and contracts. The primary AI model that legal professionals rely on the most is large language models (LLM). 

An LLM is a type of generative AI model that is trained to recognize and predict patterns in the process of analyzing vast amounts of data before generating language. Certain LLM models are designed to mimic human intelligence in writing, so the resulting text can be very difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish from human-written text. 

There are also LLM models that are trained explicitly for legal writing use. These AI tools can greatly improve the efficiency of legal professionals and teams by spotting issues and providing insights into legal documents that may not have otherwise been missed. For example, AI-powered analytical tools can help lawyers access relevant statutes or case laws or point out any inconsistencies that may exist in a legal document. 

According to a State of Practice survey conducted by Bloomberg Law, 58% of lawyers surveyed were using AI-powered tools to draft legal communications, including memos and emails. Another 53% were using them for legal research, 34% for reviewing existing legal documents, and 23% for drafting new legal documents. 

In short, AI has proven to be very popular among legal professionals across the board due to its ability to help streamline lawyers’ workflow. Fundamentally, AI allows lawyers to focus more of their energy on less mundane tasks and greatly improves their overall efficiency.

However, using AI to review or edit legal documents may not be smooth sailing, either. Even though many lawyers have been increasingly relying on LLM models for at least part of their legal writing work, almost all of these lawyers are not totally dependent on it, and some have avoided using it completely. 

Let’s find out why. 

What Are the Common Issues Lawyers Face With Legal Documents?

Creating a perfect, quality, and accurate legal document by simply providing an LLM model with a little input and letting it go to work sounds like a dream too good to be true. That’s because, for now, at least, it is too good to be true. 

Lawyers still regularly encounter numerous challenges and problems when creating legal documents with AI. Yes, AI can certainly help boost productivity and efficiency, but it’s not an end-all-be-all solution either. There are many reasons why. 

One reason is that, even though LLM models can generate content that reads very closely to human-written, those same models still can have a very difficult time with “reading between the lines” like a human can. 

In other words, just because AI can create content like a human doesn’t mean it can think like a human, and that’s a major difference. This means that the more complex or multifaceted the information an AI model is given, the more it will struggle to generate accurate content. 

Another limitation to AI models is that they may or may not be kept fully up-to-date with existing legal information and data. Depending on your specific field and when the LLM model you are using was last updated, it may or may not provide fully accurate information. And even then, it’s prudent to double-check everything just to make sure. 

In short, AI can be a very effective tool for streamlining a lawyer’s writing work, but it shouldn’t be left alone without any “supervision” or checking, either. Next, we’ll dive into the specific kinds of legal work and documents that AI can help with. 

How Can AI Be Used To Review Legal Documents?

When it comes to reviewing legal content, AI can be used effectively in the following ways:

Analyzing Legal Briefs

Perhaps the biggest way lawyers save time with AI is by analyzing legal briefs. AI can ensure that briefs are comprehensively written and tailored to a specific case at hand, so long as it receives the correct information beforehand. 

LLM models designed specifically for legal work will also suggest legal precedents and analyze past outcomes that lawyers may want to take into consideration as well. 

As an example, LexCheck’s LLM software can help clients create their own playbook, allowing them to review documents with specific language in mind. It can also spot issues in a matter of seconds, making the review process infinitely more efficient. LecCheck also integrates into existing workflows through Microsoft Word.

Managing and Organizing Documents 

Besides aiding in generating or analyzing legal documents, AI can also be used to help manage or organize documents by tagging and categorizing them. Managed Document Review Services, for instance, give lawyers a much easier time retrieving documents and tracking changes across different document versions. 

An AI tool can do this because it utilizes NLP (Natural Language Processing) to read through documents and understand their content. Then, it can categorize that content based on its length, type, niche, or other parameters. 

Summarizing Documents 

Alternatively, AI can also use the same process to summarize long texts. For example, AI can take a several hundred-page report and condense it down into a number of specific bullet points in a matter of seconds. 

Alternatively, lawyers can also request that an AI tool scan a document for important pieces of information for it to extract and summarize. This can also save lawyers countless hours versus having to manually search for these pieces of information themselves. 

Reviewing Documents for Inconsistencies 

One of the best uses for AI is its ability to reduce human error by looking for inconsistencies when it comes to spelling and grammar. LexCheck’s AI Document Review Tool can save lawyers countless hours from having to closely read through documents. It can spot issues based on playbook language and even suggest changes.

For all of the above benefits, however, there are certain things that AI cannot do when it comes to legal writing.

What Does AI Struggle With in Legal Work?

As we’ve seen, AI can work tremendously in reviewing legal documents. However, when it comes to creating or drafting documents, AI can help but not entirely replace a human writer. For example, an AI tool will most likely never be able to replicate all of the nuanced perspectives from many years of expertise that human lawyers can bring to the table. 

Yes, AI can help those lawyers review documents, generate initial versions of text, and analyze the data, but it has a far more difficult time understanding the contexts or emotions of the people at play behind each case. An AI tool will never be able to truly advocate for a client the way an experienced lawyer can, for instance. 

Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of each lawyer to check and interpret each document they write and receive, respectively. Lawyers need to not only understand the text explicitly like an AI can, they also need to understand it implicitly. 

At the end of the day, human judgment remains absolutely essential for legal work of any kind, and this is the one aspect of crafting legal documents that an LLM tool will never be able to do. This is what using AI ethically is all about. 

AI is nothing we should be totally dependent on, nor is it something we would be wise to ignore. Rather, there’s a middle road here that lawyers would be wise to walk.

Conclusion

AI can greatly complement the work of lawyers when reviewing legal documents, but it cannot replace the work of a lawyer entirely. There’s no denying that AI has significantly changed the way lawyers work by helping make their work more efficient and streamlining their workflows.

With that in mind, lawyers can use LexCheck’s AI tools effectively to help review legal documents and spot issues quickly. By using a specific playbook, LexCheck can ensure that in-house legal teams and contract-management teams spot issues quickly and review documents with efficiency, reducing the lag time many teams experience. 

Sources:

What is a large language model (LLM)? | Cloudflare

2023 State of Practice: Practice in the New Era | Bloomberg Law

AI Can’t Replay Human Writers | TechCrunch

You are not hallucinating: Risks and problems associated with Generative AI for lawyers | FMG Law