Unlock New Business Opportunities: AI-Powered eDiscovery for SMB Law Firms

By Alaa Jebbari 

A version of this article first appeared in the August 2024 issue of Law Journal Newsletters.

Legal professionals increasingly deal with the challenges of doing more with less as the volume of the work they perform grows exponentially. These professionals look to leverage technology to help complete their tasks and create more value with their work. 

That’s particularly true of the legal work involved in eDiscovery. It’s not uncommon for the data that must be reviewed and prepared as part of investigatory work to reach into the terabytes. It’s the kind of scale and scope that leaves legal professionals scouring the vendor world for help, which often subjects them to complexity and, frankly in our experience, smoke and mirrors.

Yet the introduction of artificial intelligence and other automation-based technologies may now be cutting through some of that mystery. 

Addressing Cost and Complexity in eDiscovery Solutions

We recently met with a group of paralegals, all of whom work for small-to-medium-sized (SMB) law firms. From the conversation, we learned of frustrations in attaining solutions for their eDiscovery challenges. Price and complexity, they told us, are often barriers for entry and access to technology that helps them save time, create real value and develop new businesses while retaining existing clients. They also said they often feel ill-equipped, as if they’re being offered Windows Vista in a Windows 10/11 world, so to speak. 

It was a problem statement that we believe user-friendly technologies, including especially the deployment of artificial intelligence tools, will help answer. 

Leveraging AI to Enhance Competitiveness and Client Satisfaction

Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and more sophisticated forms of AI are all helping to level the playing field for these SMB law firms. These tools give them the power to manage cases and gain immediate insight into their investigative matters, producing fast results at a fraction of the traditional cost. They can then harness the power of AI technologies to significantly enhance their competitiveness, providing greater benefits to their clients.

Here are a few specific ways that these technologies help SMB law firms meet their goals: 

Exhibit Creation

The creation of exhibit for use at trial can be a cumbersome process, one that is often created manually if legal professionals don’t have access to tools like the Adobe Creative Suite. That means it can sometimes take an entire day or longer to prepare and stamp these exhibits. AI can simplify this process greatly by capturing the information needed to create the exhibits upfront and then by automatically performing the work via NLP or machine-learning technology. 

Like many tasks and processes that use AI, it’s something that runs counterintuitive to the billable hour and argues for a flat-fee approach. That, in turn, can make SMB law firms more competitive in serving and attracting clients.

Remote Collection

Here is a modern innovation that is all about convenience and time-savings for the clients of SMB law firms. 

Newer systems allow for the secure collection of client data for processing remotely. It’s as simple as creating and sending a link to clients and then using that link to upload folders containing the documents to be processed for eDiscovery investigation to a server for a firm’s paralegals or associates to then grab and begin actually processing. There’s no need for an onsite visit or the use of an external hard drive. 

This kind of simplicity and remote collaboration further promotes efficiency and can potentially generate new business as the service offering is established. 

Case Generation

This is where AI technologies are at their most powerful. Through a combination of natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI, the information that helps SMB law firms understand the initial contours of an investigatory matter is analyzed and organized automatically. 

First, the client creates the case when processing is kicked off. Then, true magic occurs. 

o Data Summarization: As the data is processing, newer eDiscovery systems use technology in the background that generates summaries of each discrete document they ingest. These generative AI-crafted summaries help you assess the contents of individual documents immediately, before any actual coding or production takes place. This is how and when you begin to tell the story of your data. It’s a competitive advantage that creates valuable insight for clients and enhances firms’ ability to advise them on matter strategy 

o Topic Modeling: As the data is being summarized, newer systems also work to classify the documents automatically into distinct topics—another byproduct of generative-AI technology. Once your data is processed, firms can then access a ready-made list of topics their matter’s document universe contains and learn the size of each of those assigned populations. It’s the kind of instant overview that empowers firms to begin strategizing how they’ll prioritize reviews, and also to determine which topics are most likely to bolster their ability to present cases either to an executive boardroom or to a jury at trial. It’s data-driven insight that gives firms a competitive edge in convincing prospective new clients of the value they can offer upon being retained. 

Meeting Paralegals' Needs for Efficiency and Productivity

Ultimately, the paralegals we met with mainly expressed their desire to save time and save money, and thereby maintain a high level of productivity in completing their eDiscovery-related work. Those are the aspects of their professional lives that AI and related technologies address most pointedly—and most assuredly.

It’s the type of futureproofing, and the type of counter to all those aforementioned smoke and mirrors, we think SMB law firms will come to value, and that their clients – and new prospects – are beginning to expect.

Learn more about Questa's innovative eDiscovery platform! 

Download our brochure: https://lnkd.in/eDknzN67

Learn more about Questa's AI powered solutions:

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