AI Tools for Legal Writing

Can AI do the job of a lawyer?

No. While generative AI can offer useful productivity tools for lawyers – potentially helping them to complete research that might typically take days or weeks in mere seconds – it can’t replace legal professionals’ analytical skills, institutional knowledge, and deep thinking. In addition, successful lawyers must develop and demonstrate excellent client relations and leadership skills – both of which require a human element.

Will AI replace legal assistants?

While there is potential for AI to impact certain duties performed by legal assistants, paralegals, and even some early-career attorneys, it’s important to remember that the use of AI must be compatible with the rules of ethical conduct that lawyers abide by.

So, rather than replacing legal assistants and other legal professionals such as paralegals, it’s more likely that AI will help legal teams – especially in-house legal departments – to retain more work in-house by using the technology to assist in commonly outsourced work such as research and document review. This outcome could, in turn, allow these teams to be more selective in the work they outsource, and could give them more leverage to structure their fees under alternative fee arrangements for work sent to outside counsel.

Can AI write legal documents?

Generative AI-powered LLMs can help lawyers more efficiently produce first drafts of contracts and litigation documents such as case briefs, but they shouldn’t be trusted to do the whole job. The best AI for legal writing gives lawyers a head start in analyzing or drafting a legal document rather than replacing the entire process.

In general, legal professionals who use generative AI to draft or enhance legal documents should make sure to meticulously review and fact-check the content before finalizing their work. This applies to any AI tool and is considered part of a lawyer’s due diligence.

Can AI generate and review contracts?

While some tools specifically claim to be AI contract generators, lawyers can’t expect to push a button and instantaneously receive a ready-to-use contract. For example, lawyers can direct an LLM to write a legal contract, but these models are not yet trustworthy enough to produce, from the ground up, an accurate and professional final product. However, these tools can help with smaller tasks such as drafting clauses or individual pieces of a contract.

“Attorneys typically leverage a contract that already exists in their system, conduct research, or consult trustworthy attorneys when they start writing a new contract. So, we shouldn’t trust AI to create a contract from scratch either,” said Andrew Gilman, Bloomberg Law senior product manager. Gilman warns lawyers against using unknown LLMs to draft a contract and notes that, if they do, lawyers must do their due diligence and check every single word.

“While LLMs are not yet particularly well trained to write a persuasive argument or engage in some sort of advocacy, they can be very helpful in the contract area,” said Spampata. “For instance, you may have a draft of a contract from a counterparty and you’re not looking to contest the whole thing, but you want to negotiate the best deal for your client. You can ask an LLM to analyze the contract and come up with clauses that are more favorable to your side of the deal. This isn’t necessarily an easier task than drafting an entire legal document, but it’s a different and more discrete task that the LLM is better equipped to handle.”

With its recent LLM enhancement, Bloomberg Law’s Draft Analyzer contract drafting tool does just that. This new Clause Adviser feature helps users immediately evaluate clause favorability to a particular party and provides a plain-English rationale for each rating. Then, users can dynamically rewrite or modify contract language in favor of a particular party with a user-friendly slider tool.

When it comes time to review the document, AI contract review software such as Bloomberg Law’s AI-powered Contract Solutions tool is especially helpful. For example, Contract Solutions employs AI technology built into a Microsoft Word add-in that’s trained on large numbers of contracts to analyze and compare draft clauses against your organization’s past agreements and the EDGAR database. In this way, it can help you more efficiently search and negotiate contracts, which saves valuable resources and time.

Can I use AI to write a legal brief?

AI can be used at various points in the brief drafting and analysis process.

Brainstorm your argument

For instance, legal professionals could use AI software at the very beginning of their writing process. “If you use AI for ideation, what you’re doing is asking AI to help you formulate an idea – and it’s actually really good at that,” said Katherine Forrest, a former federal judge and current partner at the Paul Weiss law firm, on a recent episode of Bloomberg Law’s On the Merits podcast.

Get past the blank page

AI can be a big help to begin the legal brief writing process more quickly. For example, a litigator can ask an AI tool to help create a catchy opening paragraph by providing the LLM with a prompt that:

• Details a fact pattern
• Frames the story they want to tell
• Lists the main counterarguments expected by the other side

However, there are caveats. Generative AI can help write a legal brief but, as with contracts, these tools won’t produce an infallible document.

Analyze your draft brief to strengthen your case

Litigators can also use legal AI tools to review and analyze their completed first drafts of legal briefs. Bloomberg Law’s Brief Analyzer, for example, uses machine learning to rapidly analyze a case brief and then link that analysis to relevant legal content within the platform.