Generative AI is revolutionizing the way in-house teams operate, offering unprecedented efficiency and innovation. However, knowing where and how to start integrating this technology into existing workflows can be challenging. There’s a lot of chatter, and there are a lot of solutions out there. How do you sort out what’s true, and find what’s right for you?
At Relativity Fest 2024, we discussed how corporate legal teams are already using generative AI and tips for getting started in “The Future is Now for In-House Teams: Harnessing Generative AI in the Workplace” with an all-star lineup of in-house leaders:
- David Nolte, Associate General Counsel, e-Discovery & Information Governance, Meta
- Kacey Hall, Head of e-Discovery, Verizon
- Erica Hawthorne, e-Discovery Manager, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Salesforce
- Susan Stone, Director - Discovery Technology, AT&T
- Steve Gage, Director of Electronic Discovery, Accenture
Keep reading to learn how in-house teams at some of the biggest companies in the world are leveraging generative AI and gather their tips on starting your own journey.
Using Generative AI, Right Now
When it comes to what generative AI can help you with, the possibilities seem endless. With so many options, narrowing focus to the most helpful use cases that align to your organization’s current AI risk tolerance and appetite is essential.
Here are some of the ways your peers on high-performing legal teams are actively using generative AI:
- Kacey: “We are using Relativity aiR for Privilege and seeing unreal results. Something that took us five months to do with contract attorneys was done in one day, matching 95 percent of reviewer decisions—and for the few percent that were different, aiR was right.”
- Susan: “We’ve started using Relativity aiR for Review, but I use generative AI more in my day-to-day. I’ve been using generative AI to get the writing process started. We had to start a new handbook, so I turned to generative AI, and it provided me an outline with points and subpoints.”
- Erica: “We had to re-do our data sources, so I used a generative AI tool specific to our company and it redid the mapping for us. Save some of your brain power!”
- Steve: “As a legal team, we are calling upon our old statements of work for templates.”
Tips for Getting Started
The first step is the hardest, and knowing just where to begin can feel like a moving target in a space that’s evolving so rapidly. Without guidance or specific direction from peer groups or the courts, it can be intimidating to dive in. But as evidenced by our panelists, now is the time to start—while you have some exciting power to shape the future of your organization.
While the industry waits for comprehensive best practices from case law or, hopefully, professional organizations (our panelists said they’d prefer to see it from Sedona or ACEDS!), here are five tips from our industry leaders on how you can get started on your generative AI journey:
1. Build Your Knowledge
Before you start thinking about where generative AI could support your workflows, make sure you understand generative AI! To help get you started, check out Relativity’s Generative AI Primer and when you are ready, capture an official certification with the Relativity Generative AI Pro exam. Building this foundational knowledge will be key to a successful path forward. Begone, imposter syndrome!
2. Start Early with Security and Privacy
Generative AI presents new challenges to the contracting process, from language to draft to InfoSec approvals. Our panelists suggested that the time to plan this out internally is not when you are ready to bring a new product solution through the door, but more like six months prior.
3. Identify Low-Risk Applications
What isn’t being shared externally? Or is already being reviewed on a one-to-one basis? Start with use cases like internal investigations and productions from external parties or experiment with generative AI solutions as a QC step for a traditional review project. Low-stakes contexts like this can help you earn buy-in faster and build confidence before bringing the tech to the big leagues.
4. Calculate the Impact
Time and cost savings are some of the biggest reasons to commit to incorporating generative AI into your workflows. Take it from our panelists.
“Our first review one-to-one comparison between aiR and traditional workflows showed an 80 percent cost savings. It was significantly cheaper than using contract attorneys,” Kacey shared.
And Susan added: “I calculated that it took 8 billable hours for the attorney to build the prompt [for aiR for Review], whereas with technology-assisted review it took 3 weeks with 3 subject matter experts to train the model, and that cost alone outweighed the cost of using the tool.”
5. Generate Internal Excitement
Make things as easy as possible for your stakeholders; in fact, make it just as exciting for them as it is for you. As Erica shared, “We have a pinned workflow with the prompt in Slack so our team can implement aiR for Review without an initial meeting. We can then review the results together and show them how to review the analysis.”
Where to Learn More about Generative AI for Legal Teams
Generative AI is transforming the way we work and, as showcased at Relativity Fest 2024, it is ready for in-house teams to leverage right now. Not sure where to get started? Check out Relativity’s AI Advantage Series. It’ll give you some of that boost you need to get started.
And if you’re already getting familiar with generative AI, what are your impressions so far? We’d love to hear your stories via LinkedIn; just tag @RelativityHQ or #RelativityFest to join the conversation.
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