Opinion:
What is the future with tech, AI and disputes?

Key takeaways

1. Lawyers shouldn’t be afraid to be brave – AI can help with the running of a dispute, throughout all stages of the dispute’s lifecycle. Suggesting and using technology can reduce costs and increase efficiency overall.  Using technology and AI can be particularly helpful for large-scale document review exercises.  The courts have accepted approaches that have achieved this in the past, and there is so much scope for AI to be used in this way now, and in the future. 
2. Be alive to fake evidence and/or hallucinations – the flipside to AI is that litigants can abuse AI to create false evidence, or AI can perceive non-existent patterns or objects, creating nonsensical or inaccurate outputs.  Lawyers must adapt to recognise and test potentially fake evidence and hallucinations.  There is already a legal framework to deal with fraudulent evidence. 
3. Use AI in conjunction with other skills – going back to the large-scale document review exercises, whilst technology and AI is now highly likely to be able to help streamline this process by analysing and grouping documents in terms of relevance and/or key terms, etc., technology and AI tends to do this as a stand-alone task, rather than piecing together what a series of documents means, and/or having knowledge of the background to the pleaded case in order to be able to assess how a document, or a combination of documents, could help in proving or disproving a claim. This is where lawyers will continue to add critical value.  Our Disputes team have an outstanding reputation for their attention to detail, which can ultimately assist with successfully bringing or defending a claim. 
4. Although the law will develop as AI cases come before the courts, primary legislation in relation to AI and its regulation is lacking.  It is imperative for all lawyers and businesses to keep up to speed with developing case law and legislation and having an eye on the EU’s approach through its AI Act.  There is much more to come concerning AI and its use.  As we have seen in the past, regulation and associated legislation often follow somewhat behind technological advances.
   

So, how have we been using technology and AI on the cases we are working on to date?

We’re not afraid to be brave.  We’ve been adapting to using legal technology and innovation for some time now and are always keeping up to date with how new technology can make our service even better.

From remote court hearings, to the introduction of electronic bundles, to Teams meetings with clients and witnesses worldwide, we have been embracing technology as it has developed.  We are also currently using AI to help with a significant disclosure exercise, reviewing around 180,000 documents for relevance and tagging them accordingly.  The AI technology has helped the team significantly reduce the volume of documents that need to be manually reviewed, saving time and costs for the client.  The use of this technology has also allowed us the opportunity to focus our attention on a much smaller group of key documents and consider them in more detail than may otherwise have been the case if we were faced with manually reviewing all 180,000 documents as AI has done much of the time-intensive work for us.

We will continue to adapt and innovate as AI becomes increasingly enhanced and valuable to the running of a case, helping to streamline tasks and be more efficient (which has obvious cost saving benefits), unlocking time for our experienced disputes lawyers to focus on adding value where it matters most to a dispute.

If you need help with bringing or defending a claim, please get in touch.