I think most of us would be happy if we never had to read another word about AI. So I am sorry for bringing it up. And yet we absolutely need to know what is going on. I hope in this article to strike the right balance.
As a prelude to telling you about two documents that I consider must-reads when thinking about AI investment for your firm, I want to pay tribute in general to the many writers of excellent guides. There are guides to practically whatever you want nowadays. The problem is finding them. An internet search may yield a good guide, but not always. AI itself hallucinates. So personal recommendation from an actual human being still counts for something. The Gazette could think of launching a regular feature that highlights a good guide to parts of the law or practice. I keep coming across jewels that no-one knows anything about.
To return to AI, we are constantly told that we will fall behind if we don’t invest in it, but where to start? Is there a more or less objective guide? Bars and legal professional bodies have no particular programme to sell you, which gives their guides added value. Interestingly, within the space of a few days, two such bodies recently produced guides for lawyers and law firms on how to go about purchasing AI and tech for professional practice. They don’t much overlap, since they focus on separate parts of the process.
I shall start with the one you almost certainly won’t have heard of, which is produced by the Council of Bars and Law Societies (CCBE), and is called ‘CCBE technical guide on the use of AI tools and models by lawyers’.
It is what it says: technical. It will enable you, before purchasing anything, to know your SaaS/API from your IaaS, among other things, including which AI you should choose, with its cost and deontological implications. It describes the difference between having your very own self-hosted box on-premises version (high cost and maintenance, but maximum control) to using one of the available vendor-managed versions (easy and low cost, but low control and risks to confidentiality).
It describes in detail how all the available systems work, and for smaller law firms without their own IT departments lists useful questions you should ask yourself before signing up to a vendor-managed system. Above all, you should understand the details of the vendor contract and lists 11 questions you should ask yourself. Apart from the usual about use of the lawyers’ data around AI training, data location, protection, retention, and law enforcement, are these:
- what are the acceptable use policy restrictions (which might be crucial for criminal or human rights cases)?
- will the lawyer be informed by the provider before or at least immediately after disclosure or transfer of data to third parties, including to the law enforcement authorities?
- will the data processed be subject to different, even competing, jurisdictions?
The CCBE has an existing guide on the use of generative AI by lawyers, and an older guide on the use of cloud computing by bars and lawyers, which has an incomparable set of bullet-points to guide lawyers as to what questions to ask suppliers before entering into any contract for tech – it is really complete and helpful.
The second guide of the week was put out by the Law Society. It is second not in importance or utility, but only because some may already have come across it. It is called ‘Buying new technology’. It covers all technology, including AI.
If the CCBE’s version is self-confessedly a technical guide to AI, the Law Society’s is a practical guide for purchasing lawtech in general, including AI. Like all good guides, it offers recommendations to other good guides, such as LawtechUK’s lawtech supplier database and its SME lawtech matchmaking tool. The Law Society has other AI material, such as its guidance on generative AI, which is similar to the CCBE one cited above.
The Law Society guide includes several extremely useful templates for lawyers, each downloadable as a separate document from the Law Society website, plus a link to other useful templates:
- a needs assessment template
- a technology brief template
- a supplier interview template
- a risk assessment template
- procurement policy template (LexisNexis)
- IT and communication systems policy template (Thomson Reuters)
Comparing the two, the CCBE guide is a thoroughly technical read, while the Law Society’s contains practical purchasing aids. Yet the two should be read and used together when investing in AI, because together they give the complete picture.
Both suffer from the insoluble problem of how to communicate to an intended audience of lawyers that there is available help. Lawyers have so much to read. My advice is: just read these two.
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
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