June 11, 2024

Generative AI for Document Review: Revolutionizing the Legal Industry

by Alan Brooks

The legal industry is undergoing a significant transformation with the integration of Generative AI into the document review process. This advanced technology has the potential to revolutionize the way legal professionals approach their work, offering benefits such as increased efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and improved accuracy. This article will explore how lawyers can leverage Generative AI for document review and its impact on the legal profession.

Accelerating Large Document Review

Generative AI, powered by machine learning algorithms, can learn and adapt as it processes information, making it an invaluable tool for legal teams. One of the key advantages of using Generative AI for document review is the ability to review a large volume of documents at a fraction of the time and cost it would take for human review. This technology can review thousands of documents per hour, allowing legal professionals to focus on more complex and strategic tasks.

AI as the Lawyer’s Assistant

Furthermore, Generative AI can perform tasks that would be challenging for attorneys, such as providing narrative justifications for each decision. These justifications provide peace of mind for attorneys and contribute to creating comprehensive document summaries, custom queries, and case narratives. By leveraging Generative AI, legal professionals can accelerate the document review process, build thorough summaries, and create custom queries, ultimately saving time and money for both law firms and clients.

Lightning-Fast Document Summaries 

The functionality of Generative AI for document review has expanded significantly with the proliferation of AI technology and systems. It can now produce document summaries, search through complex file types, surface relevant documents, and more. Generative AI technology can also review various data types, including video calls and messages from communication platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. This versatility makes it a valuable asset for legal teams seeking to streamline their document review processes.

Generative AI Challenges

Integrating Generative AI into the legal industry is not without its challenges. One key challenge in adopting Generative AI for document review is the fear of missing critical information or of “hallucinations”.  In the litigation context, the specific sources for AI assertions are just a click away for easy verification, assuring accuracy.

Not All AI is Equal

Because ILS is technology-neutral, we have developed expertise in several leading eDiscovery platforms. All of these vendors have been working to introduce AI capabilities. While there are some commonalities, each platform focuses on capabilities that differentiate its offering. Here are four of the platforms that have received the most interest from our clients.

Reveal

Reveal’s AI capabilities offer legal professionals advanced tools to streamline data analysis and document review through innovative AI models and generative AI technologies. Key features include supervised learning for prioritizing review via custom AI models, powerful search combining keywords/concepts with metadata filters, and natural language “Ask” for conversational searching,  constructing narratives, extracting data points for multiple topics across document sets and creating deposition outlines. Reveal provides visual analytics, interactive data exploration workflows, pre-built and custom AI models, and data normalization to convert complex data types. These AI-driven capabilities deliver a seamless, secure experience, enabling legal teams to enhance efficiency and reduce costs across various legal processes. 

EverlawAI Assistant

EverlawAI  Assistant, a revolutionary application of generative AI to the legal sphere. It joins Everlaw’s AI tools like predictive coding and clustering. EverlawAI Assistant leverages large language models to provide document and narrative insights, empowering legal teams’ expertise. Key features include document summarization, entity extraction, sentiment analysis, and open-ended querying. It’s integrated into review workflows and Storybuilder for narrative building. EverlawAI Assistant offers writing assistance, automatically drafting statements of fact, timelines, counterarguments and more based on evidence. With direct source citations and human editing capabilities, it aims to transform legal discovery while ensuring accuracy.

Relativity aiR

Relativity aiR is a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to enhance the eDiscovery process within the RelativityOne platform. The tools are aiR for Review, aiR for Privilege, and aiR for Case Strategy. 

aiR for Review is an AI-powered document review tool that accelerates the identification of impactful content within large document sets. aiR for Privilege focuses on automating the first-pass privilege review, prioritizing potentially privileged documents, and providing deep insights into why documents are marked as such. aiR for Case Strategy is a generative AI tool that helps attorneys build case narratives and prepare for depositions and trials.

Overall, Relativity aiR enhances the efficiency and quality of legal case preparation and document review, providing users with AI-driven insights and workflows that integrate seamlessly into the RelativityOne environment.

Merlin

Merlin Search Technologies is revolutionizing search, investigations, and discovery through its DiscoveryPartner platform powered by Sherlock AI and advanced cloud technologies, including the ability to mix and match multiple AI model versions of platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude. DiscoveryPartner employs sophisticated machine learning to swiftly find, analyze, and review documents, reducing time and costs. Securely hosted on AWS with a unique single-tenant architecture promoting green computing. Their Gen II platform enhances legal investigations by combining natural language and algorithmic search and allowing deeper result exploration. For advanced users, the Search Results Graph provides insights into document relevance. Gen II’s cutting-edge architecture anticipates future advancements, offering legal professionals an unrivaled solution for efficient legal discovery.

The Potential of AI is Staggering

The potential impact of Generative AI on the practice of law is staggering. As a profession whose core skill is deep knowledge and whose main expression of that skill is the written word, Generative AI can radically transform core legal tasks. It allows legal professionals to devote more of their attention to developing trial and settlement strategies, exercising judgment, and providing clients with sound advice about their legal rights.

In conclusion, integrating Generative AI into the legal industry represents a paradigm shift in how legal work is approached. This advanced technology has the potential to dramatically improve the efficiency and accuracy of critical tasks such as document review, analysis, and transcript review. As legal professionals continue to embrace Generative AI, they stand at the threshold of a new era in legal technology that will redefine the contours of legal work in ways that are only beginning to be understood.

Learn More

If you would like to learn more about how to apply generative AI for document review, please feel free to contact us at sales@ilsteam.com.

About ILS

ILS is the nation’s preeminent Plaintiff-only eDiscovery provider. We specialize in leveling the playing field for the Plaintiffs’ bar by providing high-quality discovery services to help clients win their cases. Our clients know they are sharing their vital case strategies with like-minded professionals committed and passionate about getting justice for Plaintiffs. 

We have worked on many of the country’s largest and most noteworthy litigations over the past decade, including cases involving Takata Airbags, Roundup, Social Media Victims, 3M Combat Earplugs, JUUL Vaping, Actos/Bladder Cancer, VW Diesel Emissions, Alex Jones – Sandy Hook, Opioids, and Philips CPAP, among many others.