Part 1: Modernizing legal practices with machine translation

RWS once again attended the most important legaltech event of the year, Legalweek, in February and April. We sponsored panel sessions that touched on some of the key issues facing law firms and corporate legal departments as they embrace new opportunities to innovate in the delivery of their services through the use of technology.

Our first panel discussion, at Legalweek February, was on the subject of “Modernizing Legal Practices” and it identified a diverse range of compelling challenges associated with law firms and corporate legal departments. If you missed our session, you can view the recording here.

The comprehensive discussion addressed how various forms of AI innovations are supporting legal ecosystems and, furthermore, how advancements in legaltech coupled with growing confidence across legal practices has eradicated long established and convoluted processes. But most importantly, what internal and external factors are propelling change in a traditional sector for the better?

RWS’s Adam Muzika steered legal experts from Morgan Lewis LLP, eDiscovery CoCounsel Pllc and Crowell & Moring LLP who enriched this session with their views and experiences on automation, analytics and big data and artificial intelligence within their firms, touching also on the impacts on the wider legal ecosystem.

What does your automation your journey look like?

Tess Blair, Partner and Founder of the eData practice at Morgan Lewis, discussed how the adoption of automation has not burdened lawyers to re-educate themselves with the intricacies of machine learning. Moreover, she continued that automation technologies should not be seen as substitute for their services, allowing legal professionals to maximise their expertise to deliver a preferable outcome for their clients as well as driving efficiencies and productivity. Tess went on to add the key point that lawyers will not be taken over by machines because verification remains a pivotal process throughout any client matter. 

Suzanne Clark, Discovery Counsel at eDiscovery CoCounsel, pllc, raised key points around how crucial it is for legal professionals to identify the right tools while not losing perspective of allocating the right amounts of budget. She said that it takes understanding to appreciate that any successful automation journey requires time to implement coupled with the appreciation of human to machine learning. Smaller overstretched legal teams are now centralizing their approaches allowing legaltech to do the heavy lifting, eradicating complex time-honored processes to become more price competitive.

John Davis, Senior Counsel in the e-Discovery & Information Management practice and a member of the Litigation Group at Crowell & Moring LLP went on to expand that while the adoption of legaltech is firmly supported by their ecosystem, through greater collaboration they also witness clients applying downward pressures for firms to automate their processes. Working alongside AI underpins a centralized approach, delivering a more advantageous outcome for clients.

That said, the panelists concluded that the power of legaltech has enabled their firms to harness innovation, building ecosystems that draw on the ability to centralize complex matters together with managing client's needs in a more cost-effective manner.

What are your biggest challenges with data explosion?

Adam Muzika moved the panelists to the subject of how are firms are managing big data coupled with complex multilingual challenges in an age of digital explosion. Clark discussed how data volumes can grow quickly throughout investigations but that variety, not data volumes, is the single biggest challenge coupled with changing technology platforms, especially use of mobile devices. Technologies have enabled keyword searches to be applied with ease for investigators to review and draw conclusions. The shifting power of legaltech is promoting speed, efficiency, standardization and maintaining privacy standards over traditional labour-intensive data mining processes involving numerous legal professionals. It was noted that RWS’s Neural Machine Translation, Language Weaver, has further improved multilingual content translations by identifying gaps in data and date ranges for evidential or mediation processes. This supports the search for a 'smoking gun' for pivotal case information or to identify key trends.

Davis cited the requirement for early collaboration with clients to manage their expectations coupled with identifying opportunities to facilitate investigations and map out responses utilizing legaltech which previously would have required teams of legal professionals. However, it's equally important to appreciate off the shelf products are not always suitable for in-depth data investigations. Automation has empowered standardization of AI processes underpinning cross-border transactions and eDiscovery investigations for the data to deliver a seamless outcome of clarity. 

Blair was quick to point out the significance of setting cursors to 'pre-flag data' and the use of algorithms for automation processes to manage expanding client data sets. Highlighting this point, she continued that data volumes are not the problem, it's the simultaneous uses of different social media platforms which requires human skills supported by technology to manipulate a variety of data. With advancements in legaltech, legal professionals are able to audit, track historical changes and identify exactly what data enters their practice by using automation. This further aids the journey of identifying crucial workflows to drive productivity and efficiency. Blair also stated 'data volume is a currency for data analysis and whilst data volumes can appear scary automation enables standardized approaches of client data.'

What have been the biggest adoptions of AI in your practice?

Davis led by responding to the final section of the panel discussion first, addressing how clients have embraced automation to drive value through complex eDiscovery matters for both surveillance and monitoring; he said though that it's crucial to educate the client to manage expectations for a successful outcome especially around the x-ray of data variety.

Blair illustrated transformation in the legal sector was incremental and fears of automation by a certain breed of lawyer across the legal profession was still a bottleneck for overnight change. Clients are insisting on great insight and efficiency so lawyers need to leverage the expertise of machine translation to innovate not only their processes but also themselves in a digital world. Blair went on to add that 'Investment in automation pays for itself through productivity, efficiency and adopting a standardized approach.'

Clark agreed with both Davis and Blair and demonstrated how boutique law firms leverage the power of automation and have the ability to scale the use of AI up or down depending on client demand, data volumes and data variety. Watch the webinar recording to see the full panel discussion on “Modernizing Legal Practices.” Alternatively, if you would like to find out more about our scalable and secure machine translation, click here. If you'd like to read part 2 in the series, please click here.