GenAI surges in law firms: Will it spell the end of the billable hour?

Saying the legal profession is document-intensive is like claiming that a library is filled with books. Unlike researchers using the Dewey Decimal System, though, lawyers face an ocean of big data from which they must fish out case evidence.

For more than a decade, law firms have been using machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to aid the discovery process, helping them hunt down paper trails and digital content alike. But it wasn’t until the arrival two years ago of OpenAI’s generative AI (genAI) conversational chatbot, ChatGPT, that the technology became common and easy enough to use that even first-year associates straight out of law school could rely on it for electronic discovery (eDiscovery).

The interest in genAI for legal discovery and automating other tasks is unprecedented, according to Ron Friedmann, a Gartner senior director analyst.

“There’s way more piloting that I’ve seen, especially in large law firms. So, there’s been a lot of expense, especially the allocating of staff and paying out of pocket for licensing fees,” Friedmann said.

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