Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) can dramatically improve critical legal processes. In the case of the e-discovery process — which involves volumes of structured and unstructured data that lawyers must sift through — these technologies can have a drastic impact on how legal teams spend their valuable time.
Currently, 62% of lawyers already engage with some sort of e-discovery review or case analysis solution, up from 56% in 2018 and continues to grow, according to an American Bar Association report. So, why use AI or RPA-enabled technologies instead of other e-discovery tools?
A single statistic can be very telling here: 80% percent of lawyers review e-discovery materials using simple keyword search. This manual process, used by the majority of lawyers, can be completely automated with RPA. Meanwhile, tools such as AI-based predictive coding can significantly expedite the processing and review of e-discovery materials. That’s just a couple examples of how AI and RPA can begin to eliminate manual tasks in the e-discovery.
What does a modern e-discovery solution look like?
E-discovery is the perfect domain for AI. By automating routine work and generating swift insights, it can reduce the burden on legal departments faced with a deluge of information and a lack of time to process it.
As mentioned above, many lawyers review e-discovery materials through keyword searches. This, like many other legal research tasks, can be automated through RPA — just program a software bot to carry out the various steps of a search.
Advanced AI-driven search tools can do more than simply search the discovery materials by a keyword. They also look for patterns related to keywords that give them meaning in context, identifying relevant phrases, sentences and paragraphs that would not have been flagged in an ordinary keyword search.
For example, Exigent’s data discovery tool can find answers in milliseconds across massive portfolios of documents. The technology leverages powerful auto-extraction tools to extract data from structured or unstructured formats, contextualizing that data for easy analysis, and thus removing friction and complexity from the e-discovery process.
How AI and RPA help relieve the burden of “open discovery” laws
In January, the adoption of Article 245 brought New York state up to speed with the 45 other U.S. states that practice “open discovery” laws. These regulations guarantee the defense access to all unprivileged information that is known or should be known to the prosecution, helping the defense build its strongest possible case.
While the laws are a boon for defense teams, they also increase the pressure on prosecutorial teams to quickly find, review, analyze and catalog mountains of information.
For example, New York’s statute covers 21 different kinds of material prosecutors must provide and requires them to fulfill the obligation to provide evidence within 15 days of arraignment. It’s easy to imagine crucial information going overlooked due to lack of manpower or simple human error.
With open discovery laws like this becoming more common, AI-powered e-discovery solutions are becoming more vital than ever before. AI and RPA can help reduce the burden on prosecutors, quickly scanning evidence for key phrases and words to determine its relevance, extracting and organizing insights; and generally converting a laborious manual process to an efficient and more accurate automated one.
If you’re looking to start using AI or RPA to improve the processes across your organization, it’s time to lean on an experienced partner. Take advantage of Exigent’s legal expertise, process know-how and commercial acumen for meaningful and effective e-discovery.
With Exigent’s discovery tool, you can leverage smart search and even smarter data for e-discovery. Your business can benefit from a more accurate and efficient process, substantially reducing the risk of failing to turn over all relevant documents during discovery.
To discover how Exigent can advance your legal processes, schedule a consultation today!
