Folks that don't do much of it are often astounded about how quickly costs escalate and how much the process can cost. While the trial itself can cost upwards of $50K, just getting to trial with all the back and forth between the attorneys can cost several times that. A general rule of thumb is that unless the judgment is reasonably likely to be over $100K and include attorney's fees, you'll probably end up in the hole even if you win. Litigation was one of the initial target industries for IBM's advanced artificial intelligence (AI) platform Watson because litigation was so well defined and well documented. The promise was a significant reduction in costs for those bringing or defending against lawsuits and a far better way of determining if it was economically viable to bring or defend against the action to begin with.

Imagine a world where the boring part of your job is automated and you get to focus on and do more of the interesting things – the things that actually inspired you to study your subject in the first place. That's now a dream come true for lawyers at Walmart. The company has invested in a new artificial intelligence tool by LegalMation. Alan Bryan, Walmart's senior associate GC of legal operations and outside counsel management told the Corporate Counsel that the technology is automated to create first drafts of answers to litigation and to draft the initial round of discovery requests, each in about two minutes. This could equate to shaving off 10 hours of attorney time on each lawsuit, according to LegalMation's estimates.