For many litigators, legal research remains one of the most tedious aspects of practicing law. From not knowing whether you’ve exhausted your search to consuming large chunks of time, research can be draining in terms of time and finances—many clients just aren’t willing to pay hefty legal research bills.
Sluggish legal research continues to weigh lawyers down, despite the fact that we live in the age of Google and Alexa. If technology gives us the ability to have any question answered in seconds, why can’t we find the case law we need just as easily?
While this has been the case for decades, there’s been an evolutionary shift in the last few years due to an innovative few leveraging modern AI to make legal practice more efficient. Advanced AI has been used to bring forth what many see as a technological revolution in practice of law.
The “modern AI” behind new, intelligent legal tech includes machine learning (a branch of AI) and other sophisticated technologies. Rather than delve into the mechanics here, it’s more useful for litigators to know how this technology drives efficiency in a law practice, so they can stop fearing AI-powered legal tech and instead reap its benefits.
AI-powered search engines allow lawyers to conduct concept-based searches of legal databases, instead of trying to find the perfect keywords or Boolean operators. This gives lawyers the power to research quickly and intuitively by searching how they think. Lawyers can research faster and find cases they wouldn’t have found using traditional search platforms.
This concept-based searching also applies to searching a law firm’s brief bank. This means lawyers can search a concept and find a brief they’ve already written with similar issues and arguments, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Certain litigation tasks can be automated through AI, including brief-drafting. Smart tools can even help lawyers write the first draft of their brief in less than 30 minutes.
Concept-based searching comes into play here, too. Searching by concepts allows lawyers to find exactly what they are looking for in millions of documents. Basically, AI actually finds the needle in the haystack, and does so instantly.
These are just some of the ways implementing intelligent, AI-powered legal tech tools can benefit firms. In a nutshell, advanced AI allows lawyers and their firms to boost efficiency through litigation automation, saving firms time and money. So instead of running from the unknown, think about embracing this shift in legal tech, and all of the advantages that come with it.
To learn more about how AI-powered tools can give your firm an advantage, visit https://casetext.com/casetext-advantage/.
Rapidly draft common legal letters and emails.
How this skill works
Specify the recipient, topic, and tone of the correspondence you want.
CoCounsel will produce a draft.
Chat back and forth with CoCounsel to edit the draft.
Get answers to your research questions, with explanations and supporting sources.
How this skill works
Enter a question or issue, along with relevant facts such as jurisdiction, area of law, etc.
CoCounsel will retrieve relevant legal resources and provide an answer with explanation and supporting sources.
Behind the scenes, Conduct Research generates multiple queries using keyword search, terms and connectors, boolean, and Parallel Search to identify the on-point case law, statutes, and regulations, reads and analyzes the search results, and outputs a summary of its findings (i.e. an answer to the question), along with the supporting sources and applicable excerpts.
Get answers to your research questions, with explanations and supporting sources.
How this skill works
Enter a question or issue, along with relevant facts such as jurisdiction, area of law, etc.
CoCounsel will retrieve relevant legal resources and provide an answer with explanation and supporting sources.
Behind the scenes, Conduct Research generates multiple queries using keyword search, terms and connectors, boolean, and Parallel Search to identify the on-point case law, statutes, and regulations, reads and analyzes the search results, and outputs a summary of its findings (i.e. an answer to the question), along with the supporting sources and applicable excerpts.
Get a thorough deposition outline in no time, just by describing the deponent and what’s at issue.
How this skill works
Describe the deponent and what’s at issue in the case, and CoCounsel identifies multiple highly relevant topics to address in the deposition and drafts questions for each topic.
Refine topics by including specific areas of interest and get a thorough deposition outline.
Ask questions of contracts that are analyzed in a line-by-line review
How this skill works
Allows the user to upload a set of contracts and a set of questions
This skill will provide an answer to those questions for each contract, or, if the question is not relevant to the contract, provide that information as well
Upload up to 10 contracts at once
Ask up to 10 questions of each contract
Relevant results will hyperlink to identified passages in the corresponding contract
Get a list of all parts of a set of contracts that don’t comply with a set of policies.
How this skill works
Upload a set of contracts and then describe a policy or set of policies that the contracts should comply with, e.g. "contracts must contain a right to injunctive relief, not merely the right to seek injunctive relief."
CoCounsel will review your contracts and identify any contractual clauses relevant to the policy or policies you specified.
If there is any conflict between a contractual clause and a policy you described, CoCounsel will recommend a revised clause that complies with the relevant policy. It will also identify the risks presented by a clause that does not conform to the policy you described.
Get an overview of any document in straightforward, everyday language.
How this skill works
Upload a document–e.g. a legal memorandum, judicial opinion, or contract.
CoCounsel will summarize the document using everyday terminology.
Find all instances of relevant information in a database of documents.
How this skill works
Select a database and describe what you're looking for in detail, such as templates and precedents to use as a starting point for drafting documents, or specific clauses and provisions you'd like to include in new documents you're working on.
CoCounsel identifies and delivers every instance of what you're searching for, citing sources in the database for each instance.
Behind the scenes, CoCounsel generates multiple queries using keyword search, terms and connectors, boolean, and Parallel Search to identifiy the on-point passages from every document in the database, reads and analyzes the search results, and outputs a summary of its findings (i.e. an answer to the question), citing applicable excerpts in specific documents.
Get a list of all parts of a set of contracts that don’t comply with a set of policies.
Ask questions of contracts that are analyzed in a line-by-line review
Get a thorough deposition outline by describing the deponent and what’s at issue.
Get answers to your research questions, with explanations and supporting sources.