eDiscovery Daily Blog

93 Percent of Legal Professionals Surveyed by Consilio Think AI Will Be Helpful to Legal: eDiscovery Trends

The things I do to get a blog post out. When you travel to Dallas for the Masters Conference (which is today) and forget your laptop charger, then make a trip to Best Buy to get a replacement — only to get back to the hotel and find out that the one you bought doesn’t fit your laptop (even though it listed the laptop manufacturer on the package) you wind up typing your blog post on the hotel computer in the Business Center. So, my apologies if it is a bit off.

While the ultimate impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the business of law remains to be seen, legal professionals are largely positive about how it will affect the industry and their day-to-day jobs, according to a survey conducted by Consilio. The survey of 105 legal professionals from in-house law departments, law firms and government affiliated entities, was conducted by Consilio at the Legalweek conference held from January 30 – February 1, 2018. In the survey, the majority of legal professionals (53 percent) indicated that they believe AI will create more opportunity within the legal industry with another 40 percent saying it will help the industry.

As those of us who follow eDiscovery know, AI has already improved tasks like technology-assisted review (TAR), but respondents believe that AI will soon begin impacting the industry in other ways. Outside of eDiscovery, legal professionals believe contract drafting and management will be the most heavily impacted legal task affected by AI (37 percent) followed by litigation analysis (32 percent), risk assessment (15 percent) and computational models predicting legal outcomes (15 percent).

Here are some other notable findings from the survey:

  • 62 percent of legal professionals surveyed say AI is impacting their day-to-day jobs right now;
  • 95 percent of respondents expect AI to impact their day-to-day jobs in the next five years;
  • 33 percent of legal professionals surveyed believe that AI will not negatively affect the industry at all;
  • 29 percent think that loss of jobs will be the biggest negative impact of AI on the industry, while 28 percent believe it will create less opportunity for junior associates.

“Artificial intelligence is slowly integrating itself into every aspect of our lives and the legal industry is no exception,” said Amy Hinzmann, Managing Director at Consilio. “The results of this survey confirm the legal industry is preparing for and excited about how AI will impact their jobs. Improved processes, like those already seen in eDiscovery, will help speed up once tedious processes and give legal professionals time to focus more on the strategic aspects of their roles.”

AI was one of the hottest topics at Legaltech this year, along with GDPR.  So, these results are probably not that surprising to many.

So, what do you think?  Are you surprised by these survey results?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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