AI eases research for law firms, but casts a shadow over billing

For years, law firms have billed their services by the hour. Artificial intelligence is reshaping this model as the technology has shrunk the time taken for routine legal tasks. And that is starting to change how much clients pay.

- Neha Joshi Devina Sengupta

AI has reduced the time for research and documentation by 20-30%, and even more in big cases, according to law firms. Even clients have started demanding clarity on the use of AI-powered tools.

"Consider an arbitrator or a lawyer with 10,000 pages in a case, needing a chronology of events. Previously, this might have consumed a month. With Jurisphere (an AI tool), it takes under ten minutes," said Varun Khandelwal, founder of the Greater Noida-based platform offering AI services to law firms.

"With generative AI, the fundamental impact extends to 40-60% of daily legal workflows, and this figure will rise as AI capabilities deepen," Khandelwal said. "We have seen adoption skyrocket, both among the largest law firms in India and at the Supreme Court level." Jurisphere's clients include MZM Legal, Burgeon Law, Wadia Ghandy and IndusLaw.

Such tools use generative AI, which can create text or images based on patterns and data fed to it during training.

AI is primarily used in law firms for legal research, document review, organizing and summarizing large volumes of documents, tabulation, compliance reviews, and drafting standard contracts or letters. It automates manual and timeconsuming tasks. However, complex legal analysis, negotiations, and final legal judgments still require extensive human oversight and expertise.