The Effect AI Will Have on the Corporate Legal Industry
By Sharmista Thota
Artificial intelligence is everywhere. People now use AI software like ChatGPT and Microsoft AI for various reasons, however, it links back to the convenience of people. AI technology has improved tremendously within the past couple of years. With its high accessibility and fast generation, it is favored by the general public and is constantly being used by almost anyone who has a device. These unprecedented but recent improvements of AI are now beneficial to an unexpected number of people: lawyers. Legal research takes an immense amount of effort for attorneys to interpret and use information from. Before AI, lawyers were expected to use items like law libraries, government publications, etc., for their clients’ cases to proceed smoothly. Interpreting legal research is a challenging process for lawyers because it requires a multitude of skills, including critical thinking, perseverance, and analysis. Attorneys that are in the corporate field have a harder time finding research because of the complexity of corporate law in general. But the usage of legal AI software may change that for attorneys.
Using legal AI facilitates the usage of AI’s machine learning, processing, and other AI technologies to help automate tasks like finding research. These new forms of technology can help lawyers immensely and may make their jobs easier in the present and future. Typical legal resources have vocabulary and language that is generally harder to interpret. AI-driven tools can interpret legal nuance within seconds, while it would take a human six to ten hours. It can also do things like summarization, generation, and identification of subtle differences within legal text. All these qualities that legal AI technology has would be extremely beneficial to lawyers in the future because of its convenience. AI-generative tools like Harvey AI, Lexis+ AI, or more have these abilities.
Artificial intelligence tools can now be used for many tasks in corporate law that would take lawyers hours to do. It can generate legal review documents and summaries within seconds. AI can also be used to review contracts within a short frame of time. Lander & Rodgers, an international legal company, uses AI to assist in the analysis and summarization of complex contracts and other forms of documents. They also used AI to group similar clauses and export findings to business teams outwardly. Their usage of AI saved significant amounts of time and resources. An example of an AI generative tool that would assist in this would be Predactica’s ContractGenie.
Generative AI tools have the ability to generate legal reviews, analyze documents, etc. It would enhance the productivity of attorneys in the corporate field. Now, seventy-six percent of corporate legal teams use AI to assist with the convenience of research. It assists lawyers in all kinds of fields immensely, allowing them to focus on articulating a strong argument for court day. Regardless of its convenience, though, AI still needs to be used responsibly and in moderation. AI will transform the corporate legal industry immensely.
Citations:
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Joyce, J. (2024) Using generative AI in the practice of Corporate Law, California Lawyers Association. Available at: https://calawyers.org/business-law/using-generative-ai-in-the-practice-of-corporate-law/ (Accessed: 16 May 2025).
Kumar, A. and Kashyap, A.K. (2024) Ai and business law: Navigating new frontiers, California Management Review. Available at: https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2024/12/ai-and-business-law-navigating-new-frontiers/ (Accessed: 16 May 2025).
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