Article originally appeared in the Missouri In-House Counsel.
Carly Duvall Le Riche, general counsel at Cariloop, which offers a platform for caregivers, recently turned to a law firm for help because she was updating the company’s employment handbook and policies, which was complicated by the fact that they employ people in lots of states, each with its own laws.
She wanted help from a law firm that worked with employers around the country and could also help produce handbook language that was easy to understand, she said.
“There are lots of different laws at play, and you’re trying to both be legally compliant with the laws that are in effect, and you’re trying to do it in a way that is communicating to non-lawyers because it’s a handbook or a policy that is going to your employment populace at large,” said Duvall Le Riche, who is based in Kansas City.
While Duvall Le Riche expects that she will always need assistance from outside counsel, some in the in-house attorney sector are now predicting that advances in generative artificial intelligence could eventually mean that companies and other organizations will not need as much help from law firms.
More than half of the in-house legal professionals surveyed in a recent study from the Association of Corporate Counsel and Everlaw, which offers AI software for attorneys, said that they expected to rely less on outside legal service providers because of generative AI.
“The rapid pace of GenAI’s integration into corporate legal departments and the significant impact it is making is remarkable,” Veta Richardson, president and CEO of the Association of Corporate Counsel, stated in a news release.
Still, in Missouri, while in-house counselors have already started to use generative AI tools — and expect to adopt more in the future — they say that increased efficiency does not necessarily mean outside counselors will have to look harder for work.
AI helps attorneys streamline tasks
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot, in November 2022, the potential benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence have remained a constant topic of discussion across society.
Among attorneys, 77 percent believe generative AI tools will increase the efficiency of lawyers, paralegals or law clerks, and 63 percent believe generative AI will change the way law is taught and studied, according to a 2023 survey from LexisNexis.
Most corporate counselors said they expected law firms to adopt AI technology — and most of their counterparts agreed that corporate clients would expect that.
Duvall Le Riche sometimes uses ChatGPT for first drafts of correspondence, contractual language and PowerPoint presentations.
“I also utilize it for some task management and organizational work,” said Duvall Le Riche.
In short, “it streamlines administrative tasks,” she added.
AI tools also help summarize large amounts of documents, said Jovita Foster, senior vice president and chief legal officer at Drury Hotels, which is based in St. Louis.
That keeps Foster and her team from having to look at files across Microsoft Word, Outlook and Excel and instead, “in a secure way pull together common themes,” she said.
“To be able to quickly and succinctly find what you need and to describe it in a way that is accessible to the people you’re serving is very important,” said Foster.
Eugene Tucker, associate general counsel at HOK, an architecture firm, said that people in his profession must meet quick deadlines and that generative AI could potentially help them.
That could mean summarizing contracts or crunching data, he said.
The AI tools could help attorneys at architecture firms and elsewhere “analyze internal metrics and internal data to see where we maybe need to devote more resources,” Tucker said.
AI is quick but attorneys adopt it cautiously
Dwayne Fulk, president and CEO of City Utilities of Springfield, has encouraged his employees to experiment with generative AI tools for personal use — but not yet for business.
“I would expect it would increase the efficiency and hopefully the accuracy and the breadth of our legal research [and] our contract and correspondence drafting,” said Fulk, who previously worked as the utility’s general counsel and held several other positions before becoming CEO.
While the four attorneys all see benefits in generative AI, like much of the population, they also have concerns about potential harms from it.
Foster said every conference she attended in the last couple years has had a session on AI. Attorneys worry about data privacy and AI tools producing inaccurate information, she said.
“I think folks are really struggling with weighing the benefits against the risks,” she said.
Tucker and his attorney colleagues have not started using generative AI tools because they are still reviewing options to ensure that when they “commit to something, we are comfortable with it.”
Tucker also has concerns about what happens to the files he submits to an AI tool.
“Am I losing the confidentiality of what I upload?” he said.
And then there is the uncertainty of how employees will react to the introduction of AI tools.
“Employees are always concerned about any type of technology or change in process that might eliminate or reduce some of their job duties,” said Fulk, who is waiting on a government license for the Springfield utility to use a Microsoft AI tool before adopting it.
Duvall Le Riche, of Cariloop, said generative AI has not changed how she works with outside counsel, but she anticipates that it could, “especially as those tools become more targeted or specified towards legal work.”
She is interested to see how generative AI could help with mergers and acquisitions.
“If you’re wanting to review a lot of contracts that you would be [obtaining] through an acquisition, there is probably a function for generative AI to do some of the work that might have been previously performed by an associate,” she said.
Outside counsel also often provide lengthy memos and opinions, said Foster.
And “AI is a great tool to synthesize the key issues quickly,” she said.
It could also help review invoices from outside counsel to quickly calculate “how much we spent and on what,” Foster said.
‘Human touch’ will always be needed
Despite those benefits, the Missouri in-house attorneys do not see generative AI eliminating — or perhaps even reducing — the need for outside counsel.
Instead, “it will create significant efficiencies for us” and free up time for “more complex work,” Foster said. “Strategic thinking and planning and understanding the impact that some of the decisions that we make will have on our organization — those are the kinds of things that I think lawyers ought to spend more time on.”
Attorneys could ask generative AI to review a contract and “highlight indemnification, highlight standard of care,” Tucker said. “Maybe it would take an attorney a couple hours to do that work. AI can do it in in minutes — or maybe even less than that.”
Still, Tucker said he would then like to have an attorney review an AI tool’s output and provide advice on “the risks, rewards from agreeing to these types of terms” in a contract.
“Maybe it narrows the work or the questions that we have, but I still always am going to say that you’re going to need that human touch,” Tucker said.
Fulk agreed that there will always be a need for people to review results produced by a generative AI tool and to implement those findings.
He said he sees AI as “the next iteration of word processing software that first came into heavy use when I start practicing law more than 30 years ago.”
“I think the concern then is the same as the concern now,” he said. “What we tell our employees is that we don’t think AI will replace employees, but we think employees who know how to use AI will replace employees who don’t know how to use AI.”
Duvall Le Riche also does not see generative AI as “the death nail for outside counsel in any way.”
“It may just change the type of work that I’m sending to outside counsel,” she said. “I’m still going to need their expertise and guidance, particularly on complex and nuanced legal issues,” which require “that practice area specificity.”
Regardless of whether generative AI will eliminate corporations’ need for outside counselors, it appears that unless or until governments introduce regulations on such technology, it will continue to steadily advance, for better or worse.
In summary, Tucker said, “It’s coming. We are going to have to get used to it.”
