Webinar: State of AI for Lawyers

We’d like to thank everyone for attending our session yesterday on the State of AI for Lawyers.

A quick recap.

We received a huge amount of questions! I’ll highlight some of the stand-out questions so you can get an idea of what you can learn from watching the recorded session.

But first, the main topic was the general state of AI for lawyers. We started by touching on the overarching positives and negatives. Some of the positives were:

• Much more accessible interface
• Solves everyday problems
• No, it won’t replace your job

The downsides:

• AI hallucinations
• Inaccurate
• Contract creation

This is far from everything though. The topic of how AI can be used and its positives and pitfalls are addressed throughout the webinar. We won’t go into too much detail here, these are just the highlights for easy reading.

For lawyers, the overarching goals are simple. Here are the questions you should be able to answer as a legal counsel:

• What can AI do?
• How does it do those things?
• How do I use it?
• What are its shortcomings?

Depending on your background, this may sound like an insurmountable task, or something you’ve already been working on. We recommend that you watch the webinar sections that are most relevant to your experience to get more information.

We had some great questions. The first one was related to AI regulation (the AI Act) and how it will affect AI in the European Union. Essentially, the AI act separates the usage of AI into two categories - high-risk and low-risk. Generally speaking, lawyers shouldn’t be operating in the “high-risk” areas because lawyers’ usage of AI shouldn’t lead to direct human harm. However, the question is a bit more nuanced than this and is definitely something to be aware of.

The next question is: “Do you think there is a misunderstanding of how AI works in the legal industry?” Definitely yes. A generalization of course, but AI in its current state is far less organized and precise than most perceive it to be. For example, it can give a variety of answers to the same question, which can make it pretty imprecise.

The last question we’ll cover outside of the webinar itself is: “Do you think customers can be scared by legal counsel using AI?” Again, we think that’s true. It falls on the lawyers themselves to be transparent and knowledgeable about their use of AI. It’s up to the lawyers to dispel any fears or uncertainties that clients might have in their legal journey.

A final takeaway is that AI really shines on removing admin tasks from lawyers. According to both speakers, this is a valuable area to focus on for lawyers and any business that has a significant amount of contracts. Contracts take a lot of time, they have multiple stages, and they aren’t the most fun to work with. They often involve repetitive tasks and routine management. PDFs and paper contracts are especially difficult to get a handle on as companies scale. Our tool is specifically designed to solve these problems using AI and a variety of other strategies. To find out more, go to contractbook.com.