Corporate client expectations around generative AI are increasing rapidly. According to a group of executives in corporate legal departments at Fortune 1000 companies, 68% of in-house counsel approve of their outside counsel using generative AI tools for their company’s legal work. Why? Because 80% of these executives anticipate that AI tools will reduce their outside counsel bills.
So will generative AI negatively affect law firm profits? Not necessarily.
Since staff will be able to work more efficiently, AI may indeed lower bills to corporate clients. However, AI may also attract new clients and create new business opportunities.
In fact, the survey revealed that 70% of Am Law 200 law firm leaders believe AI solutions will enable new work products for clients.
Consistent with this optimism, 53% of Am Law 200 firms have purchased generative AI tools, and 45% are already using them for legal work.
But to get the most out of this technology — without creating any ethical risks — law firms must ensure they don’t overlook two key factors: data structuring and permissions changes.
Tag your data and ensure the correct permissions setup
For generative AI tools to effectively read and understand your data, your data must be defined and organized. Without structured data, it will be difficult to train your AI solution, and the results that the AI generates will be missing key information specific to your firm. There’s also the risk that the AI will surface information that’s behind an ethical wall.
For example, one firm informed us about an issue it experienced while testing Microsoft Copilot, a popular generative AI solution. Because the firm hadn’t set its permissions correctly, Copilot was surfacing protected information.
To avoid oversharing confidential information, your data must be tagged to indicate what client and matter it pertains to. Moreover, your firm must have permissions set across all applications. Intapp Workspaces supports both of these critical functions.
Leverage technology that supports data structure, organization, and compliance
Intapp Workspaces is designed to help law firms organize and structure their data with identifying information that helps AI read it. The solution assigns client and matter codes to matter teams in Microsoft Teams, as well as on SharePoint sites.
Once your firm has the right client and matter structure in place, it can use Intapp Walls to apply permissions rules to Teams and SharePoint for Copilot to follow. This way, Copilot won’t pull data from sources that a requestor doesn’t have access to. Intapp Walls for Copilot also offers deployment dashboards that let professionals easily visualize and control all the data sources Copilot can access.
Using the Intapp solutions, your firm can add structure and context to your data, allowing Copilot to generate more worthwhile responses to user prompts. These solutions prevent your professionals from accidentally oversharing, promote compliance with your information security requirements, and maintain client confidentiality and trust.
Prepare for AI with Intapp
Whether you’re new to Intapp or already a client, we invite you to contact us to learn how we can help you assess your firm’s AI readiness. We’ll evaluate your systems to determine whether your data is properly structured and whether you have an effective information governance system in place.