TODAY’S LEGAL PROFESSIONALS ARE BEING BURIED BENEATH AN AVALANCHE OF DATA
Total incoming cases in U.S. state courts amounted to 84.2 million in 2016 alone. Each of these cases generates massive amounts of information. Consider that U.S. businesses, including the legal profession, use about 21 million tons of paper every year.
Sometimes a single lawsuit can produce mind-boggling quantities of data. The larger cases can encompass 100 terabytes of data, equivalent to 8.5 billion pages, or about 8.5 million trees, if those pages were printed out.
From law books, to precedents, emails, phone calls, and evidence documentation, the quantity and variety of data used in legal proceedings keeps multiplying. Often, concealed within this data deluge are
invaluable nuggets of insight that could lead to a “Perry Mason moment” where the outcome of a case is turned on its head.
In many cases, it’s no longer practical from a time or cost perspective for a lawyer—or even an entire legal team—to sift through all the available information. Increasingly, the only way to navigate this sea of data is to utilize artificial intelligence engines that can ingest all kinds of content, from printed text to recorded phone calls.
This approach not only makes it feasible to process every bit of information in a major case, it also allows a legal group to focus on more critical tasks while producing a quality of work that would not have
been possible previously.
Just as importantly, AI can scan content to monitor and help maintain compliance in various forms of communications. Using AI engines, firms can check employee interactions conducted via media including
emails and recorded phone calls to check if their language and conduct complies with legal regulations.
By leveraging AI, legal groups can implement a proactive approach to communications compliance monitoring, constantly and thoroughly reviewing material in real-time with a level of efficiency that would be impossible using traditional manual techniques.