Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
A Legal Landscape Reshaped by AI
By Ceschino Brooks de Vita, Head of Evangelism at Sirion
The legal profession is poised for a transformative year
in 2024, propelled by the accelerating force of AI. While the potential
benefits of AI for legal are undeniable, this technological shift also presents
complex ethical and practical challenges that demand careful consideration.
This year promises not only legaltech advancements, but that they will have a
significant impact in the role of attorneys.
In 2024, we will see the true impact of AI on the role of
attorneys-the good & the bad
In 2023, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics
successfully trained GPT-4 to pass the Bar exam. The AI model passed not only
the multiple choice and written portions, but it scored in the 90th percentile,
surpassing the average scores of human bar exam takers. There's no doubt
generative AI is becoming an asset to the workforce as it continues to improve.
Within the next year, attorneys' roles will transform as many previously
manual, tedious tasks can be done with AI, so legal teams can focus on the
strategic, proactive, risk-mitigating work that only humans with deep expertise
can do.
On the flip side, ChatGPT and other Large Language Models
(LLMs) will increasingly raise legal and ethical issues such as copyright
violations, intellectual property (IP) lawsuits and misinformation from AI
hallucinations. We will see a rising number of lawsuits in 2024 stemming from
these issues, keeping attorneys busy.
The Biden Administration's AI Executive Order will pave
the way for industry certification standards
The landscape of AI governance is about to change
significantly following the Biden Administration's AI executive order. This
executive order focuses on enforcing stringent safety and privacy standards
governing the use of AI within government agencies. The order also calls for
the development of a national AI strategy that will help coordinate the
government's efforts to promote the safe and beneficial use of AI.
In 2024, these
regulations may set the stage for potential certification frameworks in the AI
industry. This creates an opportunity
for best-in-class AI companies to distinguish themselves as leaders in the
industry.
Client demands drive overdue AI revolution in legal firms
in 2024
Despite the transformative potential of AI in the legal
field, the resistance within law firms to embrace technological advancements
will persist. In fact, only 3% of lawyers say they are using generative AI. However,
the growing demands from clients for efficient and cost-effective legal
services will force a seismic shift. In 2024, client pressure will become the
catalyst for a rapid and overdue adoption of AI technologies within law firms,
marking a pivotal turning point in the industry's approach to innovation.
With the digitalization of LegalOps, automation alone
won't be enough to handle vast amounts of data efficiently.
The shift to digital legal operations creates enormous
amounts of data for organizations-too much to be handled by automation alone.
To effectively manage this data, AI and machine learning (ML) are becoming
increasingly necessary for enterprise contract management. These technologies
can automate many of the tasks involved in legal document management, such as
contract identification, deduplication, clause extraction, and smart
recommendations based on the type of contract. Access to more contract data across
an organization provides valuable business intelligence not only for the legal
department, but for sales, procurement, finance and HR.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ceschino is the Head of Evangelism at Sirion. He started
his career as a corporate lawyer at a large firm in New York City, after which
he studied business and moved into the world of tech. He combines his firsthand
knowledge of the practice of law and contract management with his understanding
of emerging technologies to help people realize the tangible benefits of
concepts such as AI within the context of the work that legal and business
teams do every day. Ceschino holds a JD from Harvard Law, an MBA from UT-Austin,
and a BA from Notre Dame. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and children.