AI is early in its lifecycle, but the technology is already a powerful resource for legal professionals. ChatGPT and related AI tools can write, edit, and research—three tasks that weigh heavily on the daily agendas for paralegals and legal assistants. If ChatGPT can handle those duties, law firm administrators will likely ask their support team members to take on higher-level responsibilities.
Let’s explore the merits of AI in the legal field and how they could affect the work paralegals and legal assistants do today. We’ll cover what AI can and can’t do, and share how paralegals and legal assistants can add value in an AI-enabled world.
What Are the Roles of Paralegals and Legal Assistants?
Paralegals and legal assistants are key members of a lawyer’s support team. Their work frees up lawyers to focus on case strategy. Below are the specifics of each role.
Paralegals
Paralegals spend the bulk of their time on legal or case-related tasks, such as:
- Conducting legal research and discovery: Paralegals access databases and books to identify and document regulations and precedents that apply to a specific case.
- Performing client interviews and communication: Paralegals usually remain in close contact with clients, gathering information the lawyer needs or sharing case updates.
- Drafting legal documents: Paralegals draft documents as needed, from correspondence with witnesses to pleadings and briefs.
- Managing document databases: Paralegals may be responsible for maintaining a clear, functional system of organization for the firm’s templates, contracts, and other critical documents.
- Summarizing depositions: Paralegals will translate dense depositions into concise overviews that include key facts, plus any admissions or inconsistencies in the testimony.
- Supporting investigations: Paralegals may interview experts, gather evidence, and perform other research and investigative tasks as needed.
- Conducting witness interviews and testimony prep: Paralegals will often manage the witnesses leading up to the trial. They may work closely with witnesses to review the key points of the case and practice testimony.
- Managing case files: Paralegals manage the case file, ensuring that every relevant piece of information is properly named and filed.
Legal Assistants
Legal assistants also support case-related tasks, but they are primarily dedicated to administrative work. Specific tasks can include:
- Providing client service: Legal assistants may be the first point of contact for prospective and existing clients. They may be responsible for answering questions about client accounts and billing via phone, email, or secure messaging.
- Organizing legal documents: Legal assistants support the paralegal in keeping documents organized and easily retrievable.
- Assisting with drafting and proofreading legal documents: Legal assistants may be tasked with proofing contracts, briefs, etc., or drafting portions of them.
- Prepping and filing legal documents: Legal assistants may prepare certain court paperwork under supervision. They can also file documents with the county clerk.
- Assisting with legal research and evidence collection: Legal assistants often support paralegals in accessing legal databases for research and gathering relevant case details from witnesses and experts.
- Managing calendars: Legal assistants have full view of the legal team’s calendars across cases. They communicate deadlines and schedule commitments according to availability and case timelines.
- Managing client billing and accounting: Legal assistants often oversee the billing and payments process by preparing invoices and responding to billing-related questions.
How Is AI Currently Impacting Legal Professions?
AI is changing daily workflows for paralegals, legal assistants, and lawyers. Increasingly, law firms are adopting AI to streamline time-intensive tasks, such as:
- Document review: AI applications can scan multiple documents to identify themes and commonalities.
- Contract analysis: AI can analyze contracts to highlight key points and risk factors.
- Legal research: ChatGPT and lawyer-specific tools like Paralegal AI can streamline legal research by scanning massive amounts of online data to identify relevant cases and statutes.
- Document drafting: AI can create quick drafts of contracts, briefs, client correspondence, and more.
- Document editing: AI can review existing documents for typos, inconsistencies in verb tense, unclear wording, citation formatting, etc.
Those tasks clearly overlap with the responsibilities of paralegals and legal assistants, particularly in the areas of summarizing, researching, and drafting documents. However, direct comparisons of AI functionality to paralegal or legal assistant job specs don’t tell the full story.
That full story has an interesting twist. Although AI has robust capabilities, its outputs are not usable without human intervention. ChatGPT, the most recognized AI tool, is notoriously prone to sharing made-up or inaccurate information.
