Canadian Lawyer InHouse

MARCH/APRIL 2019 24 INHOUSE lisabeth Demone is no stranger to artifi cial intelligence. The chief legal offi cer at Symcor, one of Canada's leading fi nan- cial processing services provid- ers, is keenly familiar with the potential AI has to offer. Her eight-member legal department reviews the procurement of vendor digital products and ensures that the AI tools developed by the fi rm for its cli- ents are legally compliant regarding privacy and data collection. But, ironically, her legal department does not use the emerging technology. That is expected to change. Since Demone was pro- moted last November, she has made it a pri- ority to explore cost-effective solutions that would automate tedious, time-consuming work to allow her team to focus on more strategic work. "It's not a good use of my lawyer's time to be reading through hun- dreds and hundreds of documents looking for something," says Demone, who is vice president, chief legal offi cer and secretary at the privately held joint venture between the Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal. "We're looking to use this type of tool to get the more mundane tasks out of the way so that the lawyers can be free to do strategic, ana- lytical work that they are trained for." This is a familiar lament. Fifty-three per cent per cent of in-house counsel affi rm they spend too much time on repetitive tasks and 34 per cent spend too much time reviewing documents, according to a Lex- isNexis report entitled "Legal Technology: Looking Past the Hype." At a time when in-house counsel and le- gal departments are facing operational chal- lenges, contending with a more dynamic and complex legal landscape, grappling with tight budgets and staffi ng allocations while expected to deliver quality service in an effi cient and timely manner, AI appears to be an attractive solution that holds the promise of providing intelligent problem- solving resources to transform the delivery of legal services. The technology is already being used for contract drafting and man- agement, data handling and management, e-discovery, fraud detection, legal research, litigation and patent analysis and outcome prediction. But while legal professionals are noto- riously slow adopters of new technology, in-house counsel are beginning to explore ways to use technology. Controlling out- side counsel costs remains the top priority for an overwhelming majority of legal de- partments, prompting them to move more work in-house while increasingly turning to technology and legal operations to drive effi ciency, according to a report by Thom- son Reuters entitled "2018 State of Corpo- rate Law Departments." A growing number of departments, large and small alike, are looking to leverage technology to simplify workfl ow and manual processes, slash costs, improve productivity and better manage risk and compliance. Organizations with le- gal operations staff, however, are more like- ly than the average legal department to develop systems in contract manage- ment, project management, e-bill- ing and document management, adds the report. But tech fi rms or startups aside, the adoption of AI tools appears at fi rst glance to be the exclusive purview of large de- partments. More than 62 per cent of legal departments staffed with 10 or fewer lawyers indicated SIZING UP AI LEGAL DEPARTMENTS ARE BEGINNING TO EXPLORE WAYS TO USE AI TO EASE THEIR BURDEN. FOR IN-HOUSE BY LUIS MILLAN Where we're at is that companies are increasingly turning their minds to the implications of AI integration. CAROLE PIOVESAN, McCarthy Tétrault LLP

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