Australia’s private practice legal market is rapidly adopting AI technology to enhance their legal services. Leading law firms like Clayton Utz, Minter Ellison, and Holding Redlich are taking their first steps into AI and have plans to expand their implementation in the coming years.
These firms are experimenting with AI for various tasks such as legal research and document drafting. They are utilizing customized AI models that have been trained on legal data. The use of AI can potentially expedite the delivery of legal services, reduce costs, and allow lawyers to focus on more complex matters.
Australia has a mature and innovative private practice legal market, which has embraced the potential of generative AI to enhance legal services for both private and public sector clients. While legal information service firms in the US market have been introducing AI services, Australian law firms have quickly embraced them and have even developed their own in-house AI models and approaches.
For instance, Clayton Utz has been trialing Lexis+ AI from LexisNexis to generate drafts of legal documents and communications. MinterEllison has been invited by Microsoft to participate in its Copilot for Microsoft 365 Early Access Program, and they are also creating their own generative AI tools using OpenAI’s GPT-4. Holding Redlich is another firm using Lexis+ AI for drafting legal documents and emails.
Maddocks has adopted Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel Core, an AI assistant, to modernize their workflow. Lander & Rogers has also implemented Microsoft Copilot to assist lawyers with various tasks.
AI has numerous applications in the legal profession, including legal research, analysis, due diligence, summarization, and communications. By leveraging AI technology, law firms can conduct research more efficiently and generate high-quality legal content, such as draft documents and client emails.
The adoption of AI technology has the potential to transform Australia’s legal market in several ways. It can expedite the delivery of legal advice to clients, reduce costs for external legal advice, and reshape the billing structure for legal services. Additionally, law firms that fail to adopt AI may struggle to attract and retain top legal talent.
However, it is important to note that AI technology is not a replacement for lawyers but rather a tool to enhance their capabilities. Lawyers will still play a crucial role in prompting and reviewing AI outputs, handling complex matters, and building client relationships.
