HBR Consulting report: Law department artificial intelligence report
In the fall of 2017, HBR Consulting (HBR) conducted a series of corporate law department roundtables in cities across the country. The roundtable discussions focused on the results of the annual HBR Law Department Survey, the leading source of benchmarking data for U.S. and global law departments across legal spending, staffing, operations, technology, outside management and compensation. Participants included law department executives from more than 50 companies, the majority of whom are in the Fortune 500.
Conducted annually for the past five years, the Law Department Survey Roundtables also include a supplemental onsite survey that focuses on a key topic or trend of interest to law department leaders. In years past, onsite surveys have covered topics like legal operations issues, e-Discovery trends, information governance best practices and contract management challenges. This fall, the survey topic was artificial intelligence (AI).
AI is a broad term that defines a wide variety of solutions ranging from autonomous vehicles, natural language processing, robotics, image processing, spoken language (e.g., Siri and Alexa), machine learning and more. The potential for AI in law departments has never been greater. Although in its infancy, AI has been gaining attention (and investment) at an unparalleled pace.
As law departments face unprecedented pressures to operate as an effective business function, common optimization themes, such as proper resource allocation and exploring innovative technology as a force-multiplier, have emerged. With AI, the ability to analyze, benchmark and predict far surpasses any traditional methods of metrics and reporting.
Perhaps the most promising use of AI in the legal profession is its facilitation of changes to standard law department business processes and how the legal staff gets its job done. Ever since personal computers landed on attorneys’ desks, law departments have aspired to leverage technology to provide high value legal services more efficiently. Instead, the demand for legal services and support has accelerated while inefficient processes remain largely unchanged. AI holds the promise of providing intelligent tools and problem-solving resources to transform the delivery of legal services.
This report examines the survey results, emerging trends and their importance to law departments. Read the report here.
