What Are AI Legal Document Generators?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is swiftly becoming an integral part of the legal industry, automating tasks from contract review to e-discovery. One of the most exciting and revolutionary applications of AI in the legal field is its use for legal document generation. Legal document generators powered by AI have drastically altered how attorneys create documents, particularly in practices focused on transactional law. These AI legal document generators leverage both natural language processing and machine learning to assist lawyers in drafting contracts, agreements, and other operational documents . Gone are the days when law firms had to hire entire teams of lawyers to draft contracts and other documents; with the evolution of software, a single application can fetch a user thousands of dollars in savings. Due to the obvious benefits of legal document generation, they are gaining traction in legal departments across various industries and practices, especially as their cost-effectiveness and efficiency become apparent. AI legal document generators are turning outdated legal processes into efficient tasks containing an automated output.
Advantages of AI Legal Document Generators
The benefits of using Artificial Intelligence ("AI") to generate legal documents are numerous. It allows business and law firms to be more efficient, and that generally means 1 thing – cost savings.
In this age of AI, speed is critical. And businesses, like law firms, operate in situations where they need to be prompt and timely in order to be effective and efficient. Within the legal profession, a law firm’s ability to produce a document quickly may well be the deciding factor in winning a client. This equally applies to businesses allowing them to deal with client quickly and efficiently. AI-based programs allow businesses and law firms to generate documents and forms quickly and easily.
AI-generated documents also are much less error prone. Given the fact lawyers’ time is extremely valuable, having to spend time to correct error riddled documents is very costly and inefficient. AI-based technology helps ensure documents are not only generated much quicker but, in the process, also are not riddled with errors (legal or otherwise). Says Becker partner Kelly Decker, "AI is accelerating the legal profession out of the dark ages. The tech is an equalizer. It gives general counsel of smaller businesses other than Fortune 500s access to the same sophisticated information. It’s just a matter of giving the right answers once you’ve entered the correct questions into the computer, whereas other legal services have been black boxes."
AI also improves accessibility for businesses and law firms. AI-based platforms allow businesses and law firms to do things they simply didn’t have the time to accomplish before. The types of documents businesses and law firms previously might have needed to hire outside experts or specialists to generate now can be done in-house and on demand thanks to AI.
There are significant cost savings when using AI-generated documents. Whereas in the past documents would have needed to be prepared by outside counsel or specialist, thanks to AI businesses and law firms can generate these documents and forms in-house. Businesses and law firms will have notably more control over time and costs without the need to outsource legal work. But that doesn’t mean AI will take jobs away. In fact, Becker partner Andrew Zweben anticipates that AI-generated documents will allow "people who are currently doing needless legal work" to focus on "higher quality legal work", prompting firms to offer better lawyers and more value at lower costs.
How AI Legal Document Generators Function
AI legal document generators are software applications that use computer algorithms to prepare simple legal documents much faster and cheaper than a paralegal or attorney would. While these programs vary from each other in numerous ways, one commonality among all such programs is that they rely on established, professional forms that lawyers have used for years. You provide basic information about yourself or family member, the AI program makes the necessary inferences, retrieves the best results it can, and provides you with the finished product. These programs are not designed to answer complex legal questions or prepare complex legal documents, but they certainly are able to generate legally sufficient forms for simple will, advanced health care directives and estate planning documents. We analyzed many programs and found that most generated high quality documents, which have been accepted by too many courts to count and to have been reviewed favorably by well-respected legal technology professionals. People looking to get Estate Planning documents generated should be careful to avoid an untrustworthy source, not all AI programs allow for edits and many restrict the use of the forms to one use only (to sell the document to you if they can manage to get past lawyers guarding IP). There is even a program approved by all 50 states, including my home state of California, for you to prepare your own wills online for free.
How does this technology work? Essentially, AI is created through a three-step process. All AI technology is based on computer algorithms which is writing a series of step-by-step instructions on what to do and make simple requests as inputs. The programs also use machine learning as a form of artificial intelligence that allows computers to learn without being programmed. You might, for example, use speech to text to generate a basic outline or notes for a project. You can move files around on your computer without using a keyboard and mouse, like Sorcesa, using your voice and natural language recognition learns from the commands to follow your instructions. The program also uses natural language processing, a computer program that analyzes human language and captures the meaning beneath the words. In simpler terms, the technology behind AI creates programs through learning and working to imitate human behavior.
AI Legal Document Generator Platforms
There are numerous tools equipped with generative AI capabilities that can be useful for generating legal documents. The following are some of the key players in this space:
TypingMind
TypingMind is a writing tool specifically designed to aid in the drafting of legal documents. Offering features such as customizable document templates, standard legal clauses, and a legal citation database, TypingMind also supports GPT-3 powered AI writing. Additionally, it includes a content selection tool, which allows users to delete certain sections of a document, with the application then filling in the inserted words. Currently, TypingMind is free to use, but requests donations to help fund future improvements to its service.
LawGeex
LawGeex is a cloud-based contract review and approval tool that utilizes both natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. LawGeex understands the intent behind legal language and compares it to corporate standards. LawGeex integrates with a number of commonly used tools, including Slack, Box, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox and JotForm. It also comes with an approval and negotiation AI chatbot that works with popular products such as Salesforce, DocuSign, Box and Slack, to name a few.
LegalSifter
LegalSifter is a training tool for AI, which analyzes existing legal documents. LegalSifter can review contracts, identify issues, check for compliance with industry standards, and even generate documents. LegalSifter is a free service that can be upgraded to the paid Pro version for a monthly subscription fee of $39.99.
Juro
Juro is an intelligent document automation and collaboration tool. With Juro, it is possible to create a contract in Excel and bring it directly into the editor. When drafting, Juro displays a red warning sign when there is a missing or incomplete term. Users must then hover over the pain point icon so that the system can suggest the correct clause that needs to be amended or added.
Limitations and Ethical Concerns
As with any technological advancement, there are challenges and concerns to be considered. In the realm of legal document generation, one of the most pressing issues is data privacy and confidentiality. Legal documents often contain sensitive client information; thus, it is critical that any AI system used in their generation is equipped with robust data protection and privacy controls. Engaging with third-party vendors may also open up firms to security vulnerabilities if those technology providers do not have sufficient privacy and security protections in place. Even with privacy considerations taken into account , human oversight remains a necessity. Lawyers must review the documents generated to ensure legal compliance and the incorporation of relevant provisions. Finally, ethical concerns must also be considered when automating legal documents. The use of AI in this context raises questions about the ethics of delegating human judgment to machines and the potential for AI to inadvertently perpetuate systemic biases.
Emerging Trends in Legal Document Automation and AI
Artificial intelligence in legal tech has evolved rapidly. Long gone are the days where AI tools are only accessible to the largest law firms. Document Automation technology is now available for firms of all sizes and budgets. As AI continues to improve in both capacity and ease of use, this trend is set to continue, and accelerate.
Here are some key areas where we can expect to see future advancements:
Smarter Data Extraction
We’ve seen great strides made in recent years with machine learning and NLP-based tools that can automatically learn from data. This is set to increase in sophistication and usability. Expect to see more of these data extraction tools embedded in your legal document generation software so that users can easily set them up and start benefiting from them without having to reach out to their IT department or IT provider.
Predictive Analytics and Outcomes Testing
One of the more exciting developments is the potential for using AI tools to predict how a case will turn out in court or how a clause or a provision will be interpreted in the future. Currently, many large scale data analytics projects (like LexMachina, Ravel Law and Premonition) rely on human data scientists who must manually comb through and code the data. However, as machine learning continues to advance, we can expect to see a shift where AI is able to do a lot of this work and to potentially do it more accurately.
Having said this, there are still some inherent limits to outcomes testing. After all, humans are still the ones who decide what a court’s ruling meant, which aren’t necessarily absolute right or wrong answers. There are also several variables that must be considered when assessing a ruling (in case law) or determining the quality of a clause (in contract law). For instance, in some jurisdictions, shareholder primacy is preferred over stakeholder theory, while the opposite is true in other jurisdictions. When you put an AI tool in there, which one should it be? Moreover, not every case is ever reported, nor are all provisions found in a legal memorandum published by a state bar association. At the end of the day, despite the massive amounts of data involved, it is all still probabilistic.
Smarter Clause Provisioning
Over the past few years, we’ve also seen the rise of clause level benchmarking tools. These tools are powered by logical inference mapping and machine learning based search engines. Unfortunately, the issue is that today’s benchmarks are mostly based on customizing existing clauses as opposed to drafting new clauses. But as AI technology continues to advance, we can expect the benchmarks to become smarter. Over time, they will be able to read a contract, identify which clauses matter to each side, and ONLY suggest that clause.
AI can also help provide guidance on why certain clauses matter the most, providing additional context to NLP-based clause search engines. Often times, many of us think we know what the most important provisions are and simply never bother to argue about them when they are drafted because it’s generally assumed that everyone agrees with them. However, as contracting practices evolve and more standardized and simplified contracts become the norm, more clients will want to remove clauses that they believe are unnecessary and will be able to successfully argue that point due to the data being presented in their favour.
TL; DR
We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg for AI’s potential to revolutionize the legal industry. It’s a very exciting time for us all.
Final Thoughts: The Role of AI in the Future of Law
The last decade has brought a sea change in how attorneys and legal clinics manage their document generation processes. In 2013, legal technologist and auteur Richard Susskind predicted that "computers will become better than lawyers at deploying knowledge through increasingly sophisticated legal expert systems." The same technology that Susskind envisioned is now in widespread use. AI-driven legal document generation platforms not only allow lawyers to optimize their human resources, but also empower laypeople with the information and ability to craft legal documents themselves. The benefits of these systems are fast outpacing the old-world paradigms of document generation and litigation-preparation―ironically, particularly for the practitioners and citizens who need them most.
As the technology continues to mature, it will be able to perform more complex tasks that require greater nuance and levels of judgment, and to thereby reduce the amount of time spent performing labor-intensive work. Litigation preparation systems will go beyond simple interrogatories and general discovery checklists to incorporate more complex functions like comparing discovery responses to past disclosure precedents or automatically formulating objections; while contract generation systems will add legal research functions , such as regurgitating case precedent to justify the use of certain terms and conditions. Even the input interface will become more advanced to minimize the number of keystrokes needed to generate a document, using features such as machine reading and image parsing, text summarization, and automated dialogue generation to process information and infer what the user may intend to do next.
Regardless of the limitations, the promises of increased efficiency and lower costs will remain. By transforming the way we interact with the law, legal tech tools will likely increase laypeople’s access to legal information and advice, and will enable lawyers to uphold the rule of law more effectively. With the increasing complexity of the law and the ever-growing volume of legal information, we’ll have to wait and see how we can adapt to harness the potential of AI-based legal technology while mitigating its risks for our profession.