Law firms and in-house legal departments
AI for Law
Document review, contract comparison and first drafts for firms and in-house departments, with privilege and bar guidance respected.
Legal work is reading and writing under a duty of care. That makes it a strong fit for AI and a poor fit for carelessness. The bar has now said what competence and supervision mean when a lawyer uses these tools, and an engagement here starts from that guidance rather than around it.
Where the hours go
Work that AI can carry.
- 01 Document review and summarization
A production set or a diligence folder read for the issues on the review protocol, with each finding tied to its source page.
- 02 Contract comparison against a playbook
A counterparty draft marked up against the firm's standard positions and fallback terms.
- 03 First drafts with attorney review
Memos, letters and standard agreements drafted from the firm's precedents for an attorney to revise.
- 04 Intake and matter triage
New requests sorted by practice area, conflict check status and urgency before they reach a partner.
- 05 Retrieval over prior work product
The brief, the clause or the memo the firm already wrote, found by the question rather than the file name.
What has to hold
The rules an engagement respects.
- Privilege and confidentiality
Client information cannot enter a tool whose terms allow training or retention, and the engagement checks every vendor on this point.
- Bar guidance on generative AI
ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) and the state bar opinions that follow it set duties of competence, confidentiality and supervision.
- Court disclosure orders
Some courts require disclosure or certification of AI use in filings, and the firm needs to know which ones.
- Billing transparency
Time saved by AI raises questions about how the work is billed, and the firm's answer belongs in the engagement letter.
How an engagement runs here
The four steps, as they run in law.
- 01 Assess
The assessment lists the tools attorneys already use, reads the vendor terms against the confidentiality duty, and maps the matters where review hours concentrate.
AI Readiness Assessment - 02 Plan
The roadmap picks a workflow with a clear supervising attorney and a measurable baseline, such as playbook comparison for a high-volume agreement type.
Strategy and Roadmap - 03 Build
The build runs on the firm's own precedents and work product, with retrieval limited to the matters each user may see.
Implementation - 04 Train
Training covers the competence and supervision duties by role, and the written policy gives the firm its answer to a client's AI questionnaire.
Training and Change Management
Start with the assessment.
An inventory of your systems, data and rules, interviews with your department leads, and a report that says what to do first in law.