Technology-assisted Review (TAR): Winfield v. City of New York, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 194413 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 27, 2017). Resolving a discovery dispute that challenged the defendant's predictive coding process, the court refused to question the accuracy and reliability of the use of TAR, despite some noted review errors. Specifically, the plaintiff contended that the defendant too narrowly interpreted relevance and miscoded relevant documents as irrelevant. As such, the court ordered the production of some non-responsive documents to provide better transparency and encourage cooperation.

Legal professionals aren't worried about forfeiting their seat the table to AI, according to the 2019 State of Legal Support survey from e-filing company One Legal. The report was built from the responses of more than 2,000 legal support professionals working across the U.S.

While some firms have launched entire practices devoted to laws around AI, tools rooted in the technology have yet to catch on among lawyers.

Still, AI could potentially free up legal professionals from tedious chores like data entry, and some see this as more of a threat to their careers than others. When asked for their feelings on the subject, 66 percent of survey respondents indicated that they were not worried about AI laying claim to their jobs.

Lindsey Dean, head of marketing at One Legal, chalks this up to the premium that is placed on human insight.

“We got a lot of comments saying, 'I don't believe AI can react as quickly to changing scenarios in the office. I believe my communications between clients and attorneys are valuable enough that the can't be replaced by something like AI,'” she said.

Though AI might not be picking up steam, legal professionals seem keen on tech-based solutions as a whole. The survey shows that 75% of respondents feel that new technology is making the profession easier, though many still had their work cut out for them. Almost 30 percent of respondents ranked “keeping up with court rules and state statutes” as their number one challenge, followed by 27% who cited managing their time. In third, 18% noted that e-filing was a particular challenge.

While the overall ranking of those categories remained consistent from the 2018 survey, the 2019 figures still saw the number of respondents who consider e-filing to be their biggest legal support challenge double from last year's 9%.

Lindsey Dean, head of marketing at One Legal attributes this to the Los Angeles Superior Court and others like it that have switched over to e-filling, putting pressure on firms to do the same. Once they've opened that door, making the leap to other kinds of tech solutions might not seem quite as daunting.

“[That] can kind of be the tipping point where they go 'oh, OK, well let's see what else we can start to consider as well,'” Dean said.

One potential consequence to legal professionals realizing the value of tech is that they may begin to have higher expectations regarding performance. Only half of survey respondents agreed that most legal tech has been designed with legal professionals in mind.

Per Dean, users tend to gravitate towards tools that can do more than one thing. Instead of deploying workarounds to compensate for gaps in tools that are agnostic of industry, legal professionals could wind up taking developers back to the drawing board.

“I think there's a huge opportunity for legal tech companies to actually kind of go back to the basics a little bit and bring user experience to the forefront,” Dean said.

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