Although they seem introductory, pleadings and discovery represent two of the most important phases of litigation.

How you handle pleadings and discovery, and how you work through the challenges you encounter, can have a massive impact on the final outcome of the case.

These prelitigation phases are especially navigable when you use legal AI to enhance and support your efforts.

But how exactly is legal AI used in prelitigation, pleadings, and discovery? Why is it beneficial? And how can you reap the fullest value from it?

The Pain Points of Pleadings and Discovery

When it comes to pleadings, both plaintiffs and defendants must be extremely thorough, cautious, and proactive. What you include in your complaint or answer can have a massive impact on eventual litigation proceedings, or even shut you out from certain legal possibilities. You need to present your findings in a clear, concise way, and you're typically working with a tight timeline, meaning you won't have time to explore everything in the detail that you would like. You'll also be on a time crunch when it comes to drafting court documents, legal briefs, memos, and other documents.

Discovery affords you a bit more time to consider what you're doing, but it can be far more exhaustive, especially if you find yourself in the middle of a discovery war. In complex litigation, you might have thousands of documents to wade through, hundreds of requests to make, and more nuances to sort out than you ever thought possible. It puts massive pressure on you and forces you to wade through countless hours of tedious work – unless you have support.

AI for Prelitigation: The Advantages

Using AI for prelitigation introduces you to a number of advantages. Depending on the type of legal AI tool you use, you'll probably get access to the following features:

·         Drafting. Document drafting is a major element of most legal AI tools. You can input the relevant details, dictate the format, and allow your AI to do the rest. In a matter of minutes, AI can draft a document that might take an attorney several hours. Obviously, legal AI isn't perfect, and it isn't going to follow the same thought processes as a trained, experienced lawyer. Accordingly, it's not a good idea to have legal AI draft pleadings and discovery documents exclusively. However, it can be extremely useful as a tool for generating first drafts, which you can then polish on your own. Even if you only use AI for formatting, it can save you a great deal of time.

·         Analysis. Legal AI tools are also excellent for analysis. Sorting through hundreds, if not thousands of documents can be agonizing, and you can't afford to miss even the tiniest details that might be relevant to your case. Legal AI can make quick work of this, parsing even jargon-filled technical documents with ease so you can understand them better. Again, legal AI isn't going to do all the work for you, but it can do much of the heavy lifting and simplify your job significantly.

·         Research. And of course, one of the biggest highlights of legal AI in prelitigation is its ability to handle research. Whether you're looking at case law, secondary sources, or other materials, AI can quickly help you find the most relevant information and present it to you in a digestible manner. Instead of reading dozens of pages of a court opinion, you can use AI summaries to capture the highlights. Instead of spending hours trying to find a particular, niche source, you can find it almost instantaneously with a conversational query.

Ultimately, this allows you to enjoy benefits like:

·         Time savings. AI saves you time. Even if you're not harnessing the full potential of legal AI, you can use it to expedite your output, automate various tasks, summarize complex documents, and spare you the most tedious requirements of the job. You can use that extra time to do extra due diligence, meet with clients, or handle other more important matters.

·         Acceleration. In prelitigation, time is of the essence. If you don't work quickly, you may miss critical opportunities or cause unnecessary wrinkles in your case. Legal AI allows you to execute work much more expediently, getting through pleadings and discovery at a much faster pace.

·         Avoidance of repetitious work. Most people hate repetitive, predictable work, which is one of many reasons why automating it is so beneficial. As an attorney, you have enough stress to deal with. This is a hard job, and you don't want it to become even harder because you're bogged down with annoying, predictable tasks. Legal AI can't replace human attorneys, but it can take this garbage work off your plate. It's not going to magically make it so your career isn't stressful, but you'll probably enjoy your job much more once you start using AI to handle these types of things.

·         A second set of eyes. We've said it before, but it bears repeating: legal AI isn't perfect. It can make mistakes. It isn't going to be as thorough or detail-oriented as a human attorney. And it isn't a replacement for human work. However, it serves an excellent function as a second set of eyes. It can catch things that you missed the first time around, it can proofread your work, and you can use it to challenge your assumptions.

Recognizing the Limitations of Legal AI

There are some key limitations and weaknesses associated with legal AI in the context of prelitigation, however.

·         Applications. You can't use legal AI for everything. It's not going to be able to take depositions. It can't show up to court. It's not going to be able to stitch tidbits of information together the way a human being can in a legal setting. However, it's extremely good at the things that it's designed to do.

·         Humanity. Part of your job as an attorney is managing human relationships. You need to work with clients, colleagues, opposing counsel, judges, experts, and other authorities if you want to succeed. Legal AI can handle a lot of background work, but it's no substitute for authentic human personality or relationship management skills.

·         Accuracy. Although legal AI has made significant strides in terms of output accuracy, it can still struggle for hallucinations at times. Seemingly out of nowhere, legal AI can invent cases, to offer bold speculation, or fabricate details. This is an extremely rare occurrence at this point, but it does happen, and you need to be on guard for that. Proofreading and fact checking is essential if you want to use legal AI responsibly.

·         Reliability. Generally speaking, legal AI is highly reliable. It's flexible, it's scalable, and on some level, it's adaptable. It's also easy to learn and use, even for people who aren't technologically savvy. However, you may not be 100 percent satisfied with its output 100 percent of the time.

·         Privacy/security. One of the biggest concerns big law firms have about AI is its weaknesses in terms of privacy and security. Law firms must work diligently to protect sensitive information, and even the best legal AI tools on the market aren't perfectly sound in terms of data handling.

Using Legal AI in Prelitigation

Using legal AI in prelitigation can save you time, reduce your stress, and ultimately help you keep an adequate pace as you prepare for subsequent phases of litigation.

It's an amazing technological tool that seems to keep getting better, and law firms all over the country are starting to utilize it for all it's worth.

If you want to remain competitive, and streamline your prelitigation processes, you'll need a solid legal AI tool to ground your efforts.

Are you ready to see our legal AI tool in action? Sign up for a free trial today!