DLA Piper introduces AI to cut due diligence workload by 80%

_{The year is 2035: "Hmmm, new-joiner Robot Robert is so helpful and even makes a decent latte. Surely he's not after my job..."}

DLA Piper has teamed-up with an artificial intelligence developer, to create a programme which reduces the time taken on a due diligence exercise by 80%.

The firm collaborated with C3, a software business, to create an AI application which streamlines the review of complex legal agreements - the "first-of-its-kind", according to a report.

The programme, called C3 Generative AI, carried out a due diligence analysis of limited partner agreements for DLA Piper, resulting in reducing the time it would take lawyers to complete the task by 80%, a financial report by C3 stated. RollOnFriday understands that work applied to DLA Piper in the US. The firm could not confirm whether or not it has plans to roll it out in the UK as well.

The new software was used for "operational efficiencies" to "free up" time for lawyers to "focus on delivering increased client value", C3 stated in its report. The inference being that this AI gifts more time for lawyers, rather than stealing their jobs (at least, for now). Whether or not that extra time translates into longer client lunches or just more files/beastings being handed to lawyers, remains to be seen.

In a recent report for the legal profession, the SRA outlined some of the key pros and cons of using AI. The regulator warned that inaccuracies and bias in AI can be a problem as the technology can sometimes produce "possibly harmful results": one US lawyer found out the hard way. Bu on the flip side, firms should consider using AI in order "to complete administrative tasks more efficiently" to "free up staff capacity" for more "complex tasks", suggested the regulator.

City firms are increasingly making use of AI. DLA Piper has previously used an AI 'legal assistant' called CoCounsel to carry out tasks including legal research and contract analysis. Last year, Allen & Overy and Macfarlanes took a step towards blurring the lines between machine and person, by partnering with an AI programme with the human name of Harvey. In a similar vein, Clifford Chance has utilised LUCY.

And it seems that the tech companies are keen to promote their latest software by name-dropping law firms, with Microsoft proud to announce its latest collab:

AI is also making strides at the student end of the profession: an 'AI paralegal' recently breezed through the Solicitors Qualifying Exam multiple choice questions.

Meanwhile, RollOnFriday is doing its bit to see how AI can benefit the legal profession by getting it to write mini stories about lawyers, and create posters of what law firms would like if they were movies.

With AI becoming increasing prevalent at law firms, please can our (human) readers take a moment to let us know whether or not think AI is coming to help you with your job, or take it:

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Comments

Sounds good to me!

This is the same type of hype as when legal technology came to the fore 7-8 years ago. Machine learning was supposed to reduce time analysing contracts by 70% - this never materialised and it's the same with GenAI. Don't get me wrong, this technology can improve lawyers life but it cannot replace the legal judgement required to conduct actual due diligence. As with any tech, the challenges are around getting people to use it - if you're not currently using the tech that has been available for years (and this includes Excel) then you will not magically start using AI

Was this article paid for by DLA? Reads like you have just copied and pasted a press release…

probably easier 4 ai on u.s. style documents as it would have been all one paragraph with no punctuation

Looking forward to the first AI related negligence lawsuit.

Is this the first their PI insurers are hearing of this?

Anything that removes any boring bits of the job is fine by me. I started just before we got fax machines and well before we had computers at work. All these changes have been massively helpful.

"Was this article paid for by DLA? Reads like you have just copied and pasted a press release…"

Heh@ the A&O commenter...

Generative AI does not understand the substance of the texts it is "reading", nor the substance of the text it is trained on. It does not understand the substance of the prompt it is given.

Using it for DD, or anything else where it would be helpful to understand the substance of a document, does not seem particularly wise.