10 Key Takeaways from eBrevia’s AI Panel at Future Lawyer
LONDON — “AI is needed — it’s not an option,” eBrevia CEO Adam Nguyen said during an April 1 panel at Future Lawyer. The rapid evolution of AI, coupled with law firms’ (and their clients’) exacting requirements, anchored a lively and forward-looking conversation in London this week.
The session, “Embracing the GenAI Wave: Preparing Law Firms for the Future of Legal Innovation,” raised numerous questions, from how firms should evaluate software to how they can incentivize lawyers to engage with and maximize the technology.
Adam Nguyen of eBrevia, Charlotte Hillyard of Norton Rose Fulbright, Emily Wyllie-Ballard of RPC, Ella Krikler of vLex Labs, Jen Ferguson of Baker McKenzie and Sam Dixon of Womble Bond Dickinson discuss AI at Future Lawyer in London.
On the panel were:
Adam Nguyen [Moderator], Co-Founder & CEO, eBrevia
Charlotte Hillyard, Senior Innovation Lawyer, Norton Rose Fulbright
Emily Wyllie-Ballard, Senior Knowledge & Legal Technology Manager, RPC
Jen Ferguson, Director, Baker McKenzie
Ella Krikler, Senior Solutions Architect, vLex Labs
Sam Dixon, Chief Innovation Officer (UK) & Partner, Womble Bond Dickinson
Below are 10 key takeaways from the conversation:
Rely on AI technology that’s tailor-made for legal applications; Chat GPT won’t cut it. The temptation of widely available gen AI is too great not to deploy appropriate tech. “Having the public tools available on the systems is a pretty risky bet,” Sam Dixon of Womble Bond Dickinson said. He urged “banning the public tools,” while providing appropriate technology. “You’ve got to give people something to use as an alternative or else you just force them underground.”
Secure buy-in from cross-functional teams when purchasing AI solutions. AI software has far-reaching implications, and getting all teams onboard from the outset ensures successful deployment. “Compliance teams need to have an in-depth understanding of how these tools work,” Charlotte Hillyard of Norton Rose Fulbright stressed. “We are getting vendors to come in and give demos to those types of teams because it is so crucial that everyone understands what this particular piece of software is, how it works, and how it interacts with our data.”
AI will not subsume lawyers’ jobs. “AI is good at things like mass due diligence, NDAs, confidentiality agreements — the things that no one wants to do,” Jen Ferguson of Baker McKenzie said. She asked the audience to consider “how much goes into what is actually billable” — including all those unbillable hours. “AI tools will help to condense” those tasks, she said, “so what you’re actually doing will be chargeable […] and that should mean that you can still charge the same amount but get away a bit earlier.”
Technology sets you free. “One week, when I was at Paul Weiss, I spent 96 or 97 hours just doing diligence, manual diligence. And I thought to myself, ‘Why did I go to law school for this?’” eBrevia CEO Adam Nguyen said. “I didn’t like it, and clients were being billed a lot for the work.” He added: “Technology can free you, not necessarily not to work, because your firms will still want you to bill. But you’d be doing higher-level, more interesting work.”
Lawyers still gain the experience critical to developing sound judgment. “Associates are still doing a portion of their work manually, it’s just accelerated by the software. You don’t need to do something for hundreds and hundreds of hours to learn it,” Nguyen said. Hillyard concurred, saying that junior lawyers can get frustrated by a lack of feedback from senior lawyers. With AI, she said, the junior lawyers are assessing the output quickly, and therefore can “get that feedback and understand how to change the next time.”
Lawyers can change. Noting that law is “inherently very traditional,” Hillyard suggested the industry must embrace change — not just when it comes to AI, but also as it relates to incentivizing lawyers to spend time on innovation and knowledge projects, or even how billable hours are calculated. “There are lots of interesting ways of looking at how we’re changing the ways that lawyers are working and encouraging them to look at doing things differently.”
And lawyers need to keep on changing. “You really have to figure out how to train your workforce to be well versed in AI. It’s not a static, one-time training. So you have to figure out formalized training programs and policies to have your lawyers trust the process and trust the technology,” Nguyen said.
Overcome the mindset that training is a time suck. Lawyers are busy and want to work efficiently. Ironically, such thinking can result in resistance to training, even when it ultimately leads to time savings. Emily Wyllie-Ballard of RPC summarized the mindset: “This is great technology, it’s fantastic and really disruptive, it can cut through this exponential growth of data in a way that we haven’t seen before. But what are we actually going to use it for?” Strategies for success at her firm include internal advocacy. At RPC, legal technology and knowledge lawyer professionals who are familiar with the practice area sit within the legal teams, and focus on engaging with AI in the most productive way.
ROI is everything. “You have to tailor the solution and the training to your use cases, sometimes deal-specific, not just practice area, and the important thing is proving ROI — not just to the clients, but to the lawyers using the product,” Nguyen said. “Lawyers are impatient, they’re busy, and they want to see the return on their time and investment.”
Ultimately the human lawyer is responsible for anything the AI tool does. “I have not seen a single law firm client that [eBrevia] has that put everything into AI and said, ‘Ok, this product is going to go out to the client without oversight or responsibility by the human lawyer,” Nguyen said. Going one step further, Ferguson said clients have been coming to her firm and requesting that they use AI tools. She emphasized the need to establish trust in the technology in each instance, and ensure the payoffs and risks are properly balanced.
Interested in learning more? eBrevia will be at CLOC in Las Vegas May 5-8.
For additional information about eBrevia and its newest AI features and products, contact the sales team at info@ebrevia.com or +1 203 870 3000.
About eBrevia
eBrevia is a leader in AI-driven contract analysis and management with clients in the US, UK/Europe, and Asia. For over a decade, eBrevia has served law firms, corporations, audit/consulting companies, and financial institutions, such as Baker McKenzie, Norton Rose Fulbright, Kroll, SAP, Intel, PwC, EY, and MUFG.
