AI takes hold in the legal profession

Despite being at its core a knowledge industry, the legal profession has been remarkably slow to adopt information technology outside of online databases such as LexisNexis and e-discovery software. The conservative nature of the profession, the intensive training that focuses on developing individual skills and knowledge and the lack of incentive for efficiency that is built into the hourly billing model all contribute to that resistance. Over the last few years, however, numerous artificial intelligence (AI) solutions have been developed for legal use, and the profession has begun to embrace, or perhaps be embraced by, those tools. A number of forces have converged to catalyze this market. First, the software products meet specific, well defined needs and therefore have been well accepted.