AI for Lawyers and the Legal Industry: Increasing Productivity through the Use of AI

📌 Key facts

• Mission: Investigate the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal industry and explore the potential for innovation and transformation. By conducting thorough research and analysis, we aim to understand the challenges and opportunities that AI presents to lawyers and the legal profession. Our mission is to provide valuable insights into how AI can revolutionize legal processes, improve efficiency, and enhance the delivery of legal services.

• When: Start anytime. Applications are open!
• How to apply: Send us an e-mail (at the end of this page) with your CV, a grade report, a short motivation and your suggested approach (proposed plan and questions, potential data, and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline).

Contents

• 💡 Background
• 🦾Who We Are
• 🎯 Goals
• 🧠 Topics of Interest
• 🎓 Profile
• 📚 Further Reading
• 📄 Requirements to any Work
• 📬 How to Apply

💡 Background

The legal industry plays a crucial role in upholding justice and providing legal counsel to individuals and organizations. With the rapid advancements in AI technology, there is a growing interest in how AI can be leveraged to augment and streamline legal processes, from research and document analysis to contract management and predictive analytics. However, the full potential and implications of AI in the legal industry have yet to be fully explored and understood.

Join us in our mission to unlock the potential of AI in the legal industry. By delving into the challenges and opportunities, we can shape the future of legal practice, drive innovation, and ensure the effective integration of AI technologies to benefit legal professionals and their clients.

🦾Who We Are

The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership, and Teams.. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies, and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.

This thesis will be co-supervised Isabell Welpe and Bernd Storm.

🎯 Goals

1. identify specific areas where AI can provide solutions. This will involve conducting comprehensive research and analysis, including interviews and surveys, to gain deep insights into the challenges and pain points experienced by legal professionals.
2. Gain a deep understanding of AI technologies and their potential to streamline and automate legal research processes.

• Investigate the effectiveness of AI algorithms in document analysis and contract review, with a focus on enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and reducing human error.
• Explore the capabilities of predictive analytics powered by AI in assisting lawyers with case outcome predictions, risk assessment, and the development of effective litigation strategies.
• Analyze how AI can optimize workflow management and automate repetitive tasks in the legal industry, leading to improved productivity and allowing lawyers to allocate their time more effectively.
• Evaluate the use of AI-powered virtual legal assistants and chatbots in providing on-demand legal guidance, answering common questions, and assisting with basic legal tasks to enhance productivity and ensure accessible legal support for clients.

🧠 Topics of Interest

• Document Analysis and Contract Review: Investigate the use of AI algorithms for document analysis and contract review, allowing lawyers to quickly review and extract key information from large volumes of legal documents, saving time and reducing human error.
• Predictive Analytics in Litigation and Case Outcome: Examine how AI-powered predictive analytics can assist lawyers in predicting case outcomes, assessing risks, and developing effective litigation strategies, leading to more informed decision-making.
• Workflow Optimization and Task Automation: Explore how AI can optimize workflow management and automate repetitive tasks in the legal industry, freeing up time for lawyers to focus on more complex and strategic work, ultimately increasing productivity.
• Virtual Legal Assistants and Chatbots: Investigate the use of AI-powered virtual legal assistants and chatbots to provide on-demand legal guidance, answer commonly asked questions, and assist with basic legal tasks, enhancing lawyers' productivity and providing accessible legal support to clients.

🎓 Profile

• Proficiency in conducting interviews
• Enrolled in a Bachelor’s or Master's program related to Business Administration/Management/Consulting
• Fluent in English (additional proficiency in German is a plus)
• Reliable, self-driven, and motivated
• Demonstrated interest in law and legal industry
• Passion for learning and conducting impactful research

📚 Further Reading

1. Surden, H. (2014). Machine Learning and Law. Washington Law Review, 89(1), 87-115.
2. Katz, D. M. (2013). Quantitative Legal Prediction—Or—How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Preparing for the Data-Driven Future of the Legal Services Industry. Emory Law Journal, 62, 909.
3. Remus, D., & Levy, F. S. (2016). Can Robots Be Lawyers? Computers, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law. Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, 30, 501.
4. Alarie, B., Niblett, A., & Yoon, A. (2016). How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law. University of Toronto Law Journal, 66(4), 106-124.
5. Susskind, R. E. (2019). Online Courts and the Future of Justice. Oxford University Press.
6. Ashley, K. D. (2017). Artificial Intelligence and Legal Analytics: New Tools for Law Practice in the Digital Age. Cambridge University Press.
7. Browne, W. N., Holmes, G., Pfahringer, B., & Reutemann, P. (2018). AI in Legal Practice. In AI 2018: Advances in Artificial Intelligence (pp. 70-81). Springer.
8. Ruhl, J. B., & Katz, D. M. (2015). Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Legal Complexity. Iowa Law Review, 101, 191.
9. Aletras, N., Tsarapatsanis, D., Preoţiuc-Pietro, D., & Lampos, V. (2016). Predicting judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: a Natural Language Processing perspective. PeerJ Computer Science, 2, e93.

📄 Requirements to any Work

We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of the bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:

• Infograph - visually represent some of your work
• Slide Deck - prepare a slide deck on your overall topic with relevant, interesting, and impactful findings
• MVP- Develop a prototype with us for training lawyers on how to use AI for their benefit

📬 How to Apply

If you are interested, please contact Isabell Welpe and Bernd Storm by submitting your CV, a grade report, a short motivation and your suggested research approach.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

👉 Bernd: bernd@bitsandpretzels.com

👉 Isabell: welpe@tum.de