Every law firm I talk to is asking about Claude Legal at the moment.
Claude, Copilot, Lexis+ AI, Harvey, Thomson Reuters, Clio. The list goes on.
How do you stay ahead without ending up with 5 different AI subscriptions per person that most people are not using?
Here are some of my recommendations from experience.
1. Dedicated research team
It’s a good idea to have a test group of ‘power users’ from different roles across the business to be trying out new AI tools and features and seeing which ones deliver the most value. There needs to be some guard rails and governance here though.
You don’t want to be rolling out new tools every week, or you’ll end up needing an expensive digital transformation project in a year to unpick and consolidate it all!
You also need to do your cyber security due diligence and make sure anything you are testing is set up properly, securely and the data it leverages is ready (accurate, access controlled correctly etc.)
2. Lead with the requirements
Many other law firms are using or experimenting with these tools. So it can be easy to jump to leading with the solution and trying to make it fit.
Take the time to understand how fee earners work, sales, marketing, HR, accounts. Understand their pain points and where AI could save them the most time. Then you can look at matching a solution to those requirements.
3. Measure ROI
The reality is that most law firms will benefit from a combination of these tools to suit different requirements and business functions. Lexis+ for example only uses data from trusted legal sources. Copilot and Claude can leverage Microsoft 365 data and meet you where you work.
But can you clearly demonstrate and measure the ROI from each of these tools? Do that per department and consider whether each one is actually needed by everyone in the business.
4. Governance
You need to define how each of these tools will be used, and consider the appropriate quality, ethical, legal and data privacy implications.
Document it, but make it clear, concise and don’t hide behind policies. Train your team. Regularly. They will forget, trust me.
Look at technical controls to enforce your AI policies.
