Transforming Work

AI Transforming the Work of Lawyers

By Lars Mahler '00 (Chief Science Officer at LegalSifter, Columbus, OH)

Generative AI applications such as ChatGPT let us do three things that were previously impractical:

  • Users can now chat directly with an AI model to clarify their intent and work together to find a solution. This textual interface enables new ways of interacting with AI, as well as databases and other software.
  • Users can provide rich context—documents, user preferences, and more—so the AI can craft a solution that meets their specific needs.
  • These new models can summarize and synthesize information and generate "content" in different modalities: text, images, videos, music, and more.

I serve as chief science officer for a legal technology company called LegalSifter. We help lawyers and contract professionals draft, review, negotiate, and manage legal contracts. AI is already transforming our industry, and contract professionals are using AI to:

  • Read contracts, find the presence or absence of provisions, and provide guidance.
  • Perform AI-assisted edits, based on the company's negotiating best practices.
  • Summarize contracts.
  • Extract information and answer questions about contracts—either single contracts ("What is the end date of this contract?") or whole collections of contracts ("Which of these contracts can I assign in the event of an acquisition?").

I anticipate that we will see many new products, features, and enhancements over the next one to five years, followed by a long tail of improvements and niche products over the next 10 or 20 years. These tools won't replace lawyers or contract professionals—but they will make their work easier, and let people spend time on more important tasks.

For businesses with in-house legal teams, these AI tools are already translating into risk reduction and faster turnaround times for contract reviews. Many in-house legal teams are now allowing business units to "self-serve," as non-lawyers review and negotiate contracts independently, with AI providing guidance from the in-house counsel. This can shrink contract review cycle times from weeks down to hours.

For businesses using outside law firms, AI improvements in efficiency and speed should translate into cost reduction, as law firms compete and pass on these cost reductions.

In some places, non-lawyers and consumers may be able to use AI tools directly to review and negotiate contracts on their own, without the oversight of an attorney. There is a huge need in the world for legal services, and AI will help lower the barriers to access. I predict a similar trend across all industries. AI will enhance most knowledge-worker jobs, providing people with better tools to reduce routine work and increase productivity.

Most new technologies follow a similar path of innovation, hype, fear, adoption, and maturity. Generative AI seems to be following this path. Over the next few years, I anticipate that we will see: displacement of a small number of jobs; enhancement of most knowledge-worker jobs, along with productivity increases; new threats such as cybersecurity and deepfakes, along with new techniques to mitigate these; models that can generate creative, high-quality output; and AI that can serve as personalized tutors, assistants, and customer support.

We are moving to a world where it is easier to create new ideas and bring them to life. I am really excited about this, and I think we will see tremendous advancements in law, medicine, science, creative fields, and almost every area of human progress.