Given that AI is top of mind for so many of us right now, I’ve started polling our in-house friends about how they’re using AI in their practice (here’s my first blog with in-house anecdotes). As one might expect, the perspectives and views are varied:
- “I’m one of the skeptics on our team. Not because I dislike technology, but because securities law has a uniquely unforgiving error profile. A misplaced disclosure isn’t like a typo in a marketing brochure. Sometimes the cost of being wrong isn’t measured in minutes. It’s measured in SEC comment letters, shareholder lawsuits or uncomfortable Audit Committee meetings. Efficiency matters. Accuracy matters more.”
- “If someone told me five years ago I’d be asking a computer to critique my proxy, I would have laughed. Now I’m mostly annoyed when it points out something I should have considered or missed.”
- “I don’t think AI is replacing lawyers. I do think it’s replacing blank pages. Sometimes I don’t know which end is up anymore. Too much change.”
- “We’re not adopting AI because it’s fashionable. We’re adopting it because every other function already has. Finance is using it. HR is using it. Internal Audit is using it. Investor Relations is using it. At some point, Legal becomes the bottleneck if we insist on pretending it’s still 2022.”
- “I spend less time searching for precedent disclosure and more time deciding whether the precedent actually fits. That’s a better use of my brain.”
- “Our AI policy changes about as often as proxy advisor policies. Which is to say…more often than I’d prefer.”
- “I’m old enough to remember when lawyers said we’d never trust electronic signatures. Then we’d never trust EDGAR. Then we’d never trust cloud storage. I’ve learned to be careful about predicting what lawyers will never do.”
- “We joke that AI has become our newest member of the disclosure committee. Thankfully, it doesn’t get a vote. Well, I guess at least not yet. LOL.”
- “Some people ask whether AI is changing legal work. That’s yesterday’s question. The real question is whether people will continue accepting legal departments that don’t use AI. Expectations are changing quickly. If everyone else can produce thoughtful first drafts faster, eventually your business partners stop rewarding the old pace.”
- “I still catch hallucinations often enough that healthy skepticism remains mandatory. Think of AI as an incredibly fast intern who occasionally invents their own thing.”
- “I expected AI to save time drafting. I didn’t expect it to save time thinking. Sometimes just having something intelligent – even imperfect – to react to gets me to a better answer faster.”
- “Our Board asks about AI almost every quarter now. Ironically, those conversations have probably accelerated our own adoption more than any vendor presentation has done. Directors ask whether Legal is using AI responsibly. Not whether we’re using it. So now the conversation has shifted from experimentation to execution.”
Authored by
Broc Romanek