Many of our clients have asked whether we are using AI at the firm – and if so, how are we using it. I know many of our clients are experimenting with ways to use AI solutions to save time, money, or just get a jump start on your next big deal.
We applaud that! We’re avid users of legal technology—including AI—in our practice, and we actively seek new opportunities to deliver first-class legal work with maximum efficiency. Our goal? To combine the best in modern tools with the expertise and artistry that only experienced transactional lawyers can provide.
How We Use AI to Your Advantage
Being an absolute efficiency freak, I’ve had high hopes for use of AI in our legal practice since I got my first taste of ChatGPT– looking for ways to save time and reduce costs for the firm’s clients. Since those early days, we’ve subscribed to the legal industry’s leading legal-specific AI platforms and are constantly testing new solutions as they are developed.
Based on our experiences so far, we see AI not as a replacement for expert legal advice, but as a powerful tool that helps us enhance our skills and improve our service to you. Our goal is to blend the best of modern technology with the deep experience and personalized attention our clients associate with our firm.
What AI Is Good For (And How You Can Help Us)
Think of AI as a great organizer and information gatherer. When used mindfully, it can definitely help streamline some of the initial groundwork, which means we can get to the truly strategic work faster.
Here are a few ways you can use AI to help us move your projects and matters forward more efficiently:
- Organize Your Thoughts: If you're starting a new deal or a contract review, use AI to create a simple, bullet-point list of the key business terms and priorities. A clear, well-organized starting point helps us draft more precisely and focus on what matters most to you.
- Summarize Documents: Need to get a handle on a long document? AI can help you summarize it or compare different versions to highlight key changes. This won’t replace the need for us to do our review, but it may help align us with you more quickly on core legal and business issues.
- Flag Obvious Issues: For standard documents, AI can be useful for spotting simple, missing clauses or inconsistencies. When you bring us your own AI-generated issues list, we can use it as a starting point to have a focused discussion about what's actually important for your specific situation.
Hidden Risks of AI-Generated Contracts and Terms
While it may be tempting to use AI to generate a complete contract from scratch, it’s a shortcut we do not recommend. Think about it – have you been comfortable in the past using a contract template you found on the internet?
How do you know if it meets your needs?
Does it leave anything out?
Well, today’s large language model (LLM) AI platforms are just a souped-up version of yesterday’s internet templates – basically, the AI is surveying hundreds of templates and somewhat randomly making a compilation of their terms. All the same issues, risks and concerns from the internet templates of yesteryear persist, and often the AI-output is actually worse than any single template you might have otherwise found.
Believe me, I’ve seen some doozeys!
Online templates and AI-generated documents are both generic by nature, failing to account for the unique specifics of your business, industry, or jurisdiction. They frequently contain vague or missing key provisions, or even unenforceable clauses, which can lead to costly disputes and legal messes that a well-drafted contract could have prevented.
The AI may have drawn provisions from contracts in a different jurisdiction or area of law that are not going to be enforceable in yours. The more complex your needs, the more we find the AI tends to break down into incomplete summary provisions rather than the type of full legal protections we would recommend.
We believe the true value of AI isn’t in generating generic documents, but in assisting an expert attorney to more quickly create and then hone a custom-tailored agreement that protects your interests from day one.
Confidentiality Risks of Open AI Platforms
Uploading information to “open” AI systems (such a free or even many business and paid accounts) can give away your rights to maintain attorney-client privilege and breach confidentiality obligations that you may have to third parties. Think twice before uploading your proprietary business ideas, contract terms and other information to any AI platform.
A platform’s statement that it won’t use your information to train its system is NOT the same as a commitment to keep your information confidential. Read terms and conditions very carefully.
Who can access your data and for what purposes?
Is it encrypted?
For example, many mainstream platforms retain rights to access data and to disclose it to third parties, including in response to legal subpoenas.
Access to Special Legal Industry AI Tools
We've been early adopters of AI tools designed specifically for transactional lawyers, subscribing to the same specialized platforms used by the largest law firms. Unlike public-facing AI tools, these sophisticated platforms allow us to upload full, unredacted contracts securely, protecting your confidential information and preserving attorney-client privilege.
How We Leverage AI as Your Legal Partner
Think of AI as a powerful co-pilot. When guided by an experienced hand, it can amplify our ability to provide top-tier service. The true value of AI lies not in its ability to operate independently, but in its use by a professional who can discern what's good, what's bad, and what's missing.
Here are a few ways we use AI to serve you better:
- Customized, Detailed Contract Review: We use AI to supercharge our review in particular our editing process. Our current approach to detailed edits is to conduct what we call AI-assisted contract review. We are going paragraph by paragraph giving and getting input from our specialized AI systems that are specifically trained with our methods, knowledge and vetted contract templates. Our process is about more than just speed—it’s about precision and augmenting our own expertise and experience.
- Speeding Up Time Consuming Tasks: We tend to spend a great deal of attorney time reviewing redlined documents received from parties we are negotiating with. We are now using AI to extract and summarize key commercial terms like price, payment schedules, deadlines, deliverables, and contract length. This gives us a rapid, high-level overview of the deal's structure, allowing us to quickly identify and communicate material issues to our clients.
- Training our AI to Work for Our Clients: We can use the specialized legal industry AI platforms that we have access to on your behalf to keep databases of your often-used contracts and to build client-specific “playbooks” for contract templates regularly used by our clients.
- AI-Assisted Due Diligence: We can use the specialized legal industry AI platforms that we have access to on your behalf to speed up due diligence reviews in M&A deals
A Better Way to Work Together
While AI excels at processing information and identifying patterns, it can't anticipate your unique business challenges, craft innovative deal structures, or provide the nuanced judgment needed for effective negotiation. That's where our expertise comes in. We see AI as a way to enhance our skills and provide you with a more comprehensive and focused legal strategy.
By combining your business knowledge with our legal expertise and the latest AI technology, we can achieve outcomes that are tailored, high-value, and cost-effective.
