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Top 6 use cases for GenAI in-house
Contract visibility, the summarisation of legal documents, and contract risk analysis are among the various ways generative AI can improve law departments.
Grace Robbie
Global research and advisory firm Gartner has identified six key use cases for the adoption of generative AI (GenAI) within legal departments, showcasing how this emerging technology can boost operational efficiency, improve productivity, and mitigate risks.
Weston Wicks, senior director analyst in Gartner’s assurance practice, explained that GenAI’s robust text analysis capabilities make it particularly well-suited and advantageous for legal departments to implement.
“Generative AI – being rooted in text analysis – is a good fit technology for reshaping the legal department by automating routine tasks and providing deeper insights,” Wicks said.
“The implications are significant, as GenAI can enable legal departments to allocate resources more efficiently and focus more employee time on strategic initiatives.”
Experts from Gartner evaluated 16 potential use cases for GenAI for in-house legal teams, ranking them based on their “business value and feasibility”. The six highest-ranked use cases are
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Contract visibility and data extraction: Gartner explained that GenAI has the potential to streamline contract management by “identifying, extracting, and classifying” essential terms and conditions from legacy and third-party contracts. This capability enables legal departments to construct “searchable databases, significantly enhancing productivity for tasks such as post-signature management and M&A due diligence”.
Wicks articulated how GenAI “can reduce the administrative burden of manual data extraction”. However, he noted that “unique and complex agreements may require additional training”.
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Automated contract review: The global firm identified that by identifying deviations from standard contract language and automating redlining, GenAI can “accelerate the contract review process”. This approach not only reduces the “cycle time and legal review requirements” but also enhances “business revenue and operational efficiency”.
Wicks stated that although specific solutions “offer advanced capabilities”, it is essential to maintain legal oversight “for complex agreements” to ensure consistency and mitigate risks.
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Summarisation of legal documents: Gartner highlighted that GenAI can produce concise summaries of complex legal texts, outlining “key points and essential insights”. This capability enhances “staff productivity by enabling quick comprehension of critical information”, thereby promoting informed decision-making. However, the firm acknowledged that “human review remains essential” in this process to “ensure accuracy and reliability of the generated content”.
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Legal intake and triage: The global research firm outlined how legal departments can leverage GenAI to streamline intake processes by “swiftly analysing the details of written requests and automatically categorising them based on type, region, risk level, and urgency”. This facilitates faster routing of requests to relevant legal resources, thereby optimising overall operational efficiency.
However, Wicks emphasised that “organisations must invest in stakeholder outreach and change management” to achieve meaningful adoption of automatic responses.
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Transcribe and summarise meetings: Gartner explained how GenAI has the ability to transcribe meetings and generate concise summaries that outline the “key points and takeaways”. This process improves productivity by “freeing legal staff to focus on essential discussion elements rather than note-taking”.
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Contract risk analysis: Through GenAI’s ability to assess risks within contracts and assign risk scores, the global firm demonstrated how this technology facilitates “proactive risk management” and improves “consistency in negotiations”.
According to Gartner, implementing this capability necessitates “collaboration with vendors to refine risk scoring criteria and establish effective risk management practices”.
As law departments progressively integrate AI-driven solutions into their operation, Wicks outlined that the capacity to adopt this technology will become imperative for law departments to “remain competitive and efficient”.
Wicks said: “This isn’t a technology that can simply replace people, but as its use becomes more prevalent, the ability to harness it effectively for legal work will become table stakes for most employees in the industry.”
