6 Things Law School Students Need to Know About the Future of Legal Tech

By Ian Morris
Smiley faceThe Colleges of Law - Wed, Jan 15, 2025

“Technology has shown so much promise,” says The Colleges of Law instructor Sarah Sutherland, “but some things are just always going to require a human touch.”

SUMMARY

  • Artificial intelligence is changing the legal field by performing large tasks that are difficult for humans to perform efficiently.
  • AI can make legal work less expensive for lawyers and save their clients money.
  • The legal profession will always need educated people who can adapt to a changing field.

Artificial intelligence has given specialists in legal data management the tools to comb through thousands of pages of contracts and deposition transcripts or columns of bank records or corporate earnings reports in seconds. However, the many benefits of AI also present challenges that J.D. and master’s degree holders will have to contend with to maximize its benefits.

Sarah Sutherland, founder and principal consultant at Parallax Information Consulting, has an extensive background in information sciences and teaches two courses at The Colleges of Law as part of the Master of Business, Law, and Technology program: Data Science and the Law and Artificial Intelligence and the Law. Both are designed to help students understand the underlying issues, including the technology, the regulatory environment, and ethical considerations, such as data privacy in legal tech.

1. AI Sorts Data Much Faster and More Accurately Than Humans

Large language programs can absorb thousands of pages of data without getting tired or bored.

Electronic discovery, commonly known as e-discovery, refers the legal process of locating, collating, and presenting electronically stored information (ESI) for use in legal proceedings. “E-discovery has been such a benefit to practitioners and clients,” Sutherland says. “It would be such a mess if people had to look through large data sets manually.”

Large language models aren’t merely able to process large amounts of data far faster than humans, they are also more accurate. For example, being able to discern discrepancies between contracts that humans might miss. “Human beings aren’t great at flipping through 10,000 pieces of paper and finding the one or two or 10 or 100 or 1,000 that are relevant,” Sutherland says.

The expansion of the use of AI to process legal data will not mean the end of lawyers or law firms or courts. “Our underlying systems have been in place for a long time, and there’s a reason for it,” Sutherland says. “That said, I think there is a case to be made that a good amount of the work that’s currently being billed for will be automated.”

The scale of discovery required in the law today demands new legal technology solutions. Consider the federal government’s effort to break up Google. This legal action will take years to resolve, and the amount of e-discovery required, including billions of digital search engine records, will be staggering.

While the increased need for legal data management is currently causing, and will continue to cause, disruptions in the legal realm, it will also provide opportunities for the next generation of J.D.s and graduates from master of law programs, such as The Colleges of Law’s Master of Business, Law, and Technology.

According to the Legal Services Corporation, low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help for 92% of their civil legal problems, and 53% of these cited doubting their ability to pay as the main barrier to seeking legal help. While regulation currently lags behind innovation, legal technology solutions in this area can include the creation of legal apps that perform common tasks, such as applying for permits or creating a will.

When it comes to vulnerable populations intersecting with law enforcement, Sutherland foresees areas in which AI-driven decision-making platforms to help the court system process a large number of people in a short period of time, for example an influx of asylum-seekers or people whose bail status must be determined. “These are people who are easy to victimize,” Sutherland says, “and I think that our duty of care is a lot higher than when we’re talking about people who have a high degree of sophistication and resources at their disposal.”

While we are only beginning to grasp the uses and advantages of AI in the law, this new technology is taxing informational and natural resources. Programs such as ChatGPT are called large language models because they rely on databases of trillions of pages of text to produce search results. Applying this approach to specialized fields such as the law requires access to specialized data, and that data is finite. Sutherland points to the recent merger of two legal research companies in order to obtain more data for AI usages.

The most overlooked threats of generative AI development to society are likely the demands it places on the electrical grid and water resources. AI databases require massive amounts of electricity to operate and billions of gallons of water to cool the equipment. These are some of the current drawbacks to legal technology solutions that will require new legal experts trained in technological applications to address.

5. Everyone Can Prepare for Technological Change

“Think critically, pay attention, do some landscape scanning,” Sutherland says. “It’s an opportunity.”

While the expansion of technology including generative AI models in legal data management will continue to expand, Sutherland believes that there are simple steps that people can take to prepare for this new environment, which might mean something as basic as improving your computer skills. She says, “The first one-day workshop I took on coding taught me so much about the way that computers work.”

6. The Future of Law and Tech Is Always Evolving

Sutherland says, “It’s not a universal truth in human societies that technology is always chosen over human interest.”

As a professional who had made a career in digital data in legal technology, Sutherland believes that technologists will have to make sure that human interests are accommodated in their systems. “My goal is to teach people how to approach [questions of technology and the law] from a sophisticated angle, whether they are consumers of technology or they want to go work in a technology-based role.” In the end, legal data management is the work of human beings who are using machines to get the job done.

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