Why embrace generative AI now? UpLevel Ops’ Brandi Pack explains

“Firms have two years to incorporate generative AI into their operations before they lose their competitive edge.”

The clock’s ticking for legal teams according to Brandi Pack, Legal Operations Consultant at the California-based, Legal Operations consultancy firm UpLevel Ops.

Generative AI is quickly transforming legal technology and if you’re not implementing it, you’ll be considered “legacy” soon enough, says Brandi.

But where do you start? How can you prepare for generative AI in your organization?

We caught up with Brandi for some sage advice and to learn what changes teams should be thinking about in order to stay ahead.

Hi Brandi, thank you for joining us! Could you share a little about yourself and what you do?

Hi there! Definitely. I’m a Legal Operations Consultant at UpLevel Ops.  I visit and assess legal departments to help improve their processes and implement new technologies.

When I first started, I helped implement CLM (contract lifecycle management) and e-billing systems, but now I’m our generative AI expert!

Prior to UpLevel Ops, I ran a winery for 13 years(!) and worked at Hewlett Packard in Legal & Operations, specifically their IT department.

So, how can legal teams prepare for generative AI?

It comes down to education and asking the right questions.

Firstly, I’d recommend teams really spend time educating themselves on the technology because they’ll soon learn how perfectly aligned it is with the needs of Legal.

Generative AI is a master of language, making it great for analysing documents and generating finely-tuned content. It’s also super helpful for searching through vast amounts of data so can help with all the repetitive legal research we’re often tasked with.

Like with any technology you use: garbage in, garbage out. Therefore, if you’re seriously thinking about adopting a new generative AI platform, you should learn about prompt engineering. This directly impacts the quality of content generative AI platforms produce.

Even better, at an organizational level, consider assigning someone in your team to be trained in prompt engineering. That way, you’ll have a dedicated expert who you can leverage to remain competitive in the near future.

I’d say firms have two years to incorporate generative AI into their operations before they’ll be considered legacy and lose their competitive edge, so start up-skilling as soon as you can!

What questions should teams be asking when approaching vendors?

Have security front and centre.

There are a lot of new vendors cropping up, so don’t just go with Jo Schmo. Go with established vendors who you trust take security seriously.

Ensure you’re across how the platform may or may not use your data and think about whether you’re okay with the platform using it for training purposes. Often you can opt-out, so be sure to check their terms and conditions so you know your options.

Generative AI platforms like Josef Q are using large language models (LLMs) and applying them to isolated datasets (i.e. policies) that customers themselves upload. What do you think about products like these?

I think they’re one of the best ways generative AI can be used by legal departments!

Legal teams are often understaffed and risk-averse, and one of the problems people have with platforms trained on huge datasets is that they sometimes hallucinate, i.e. generate false responses.

By limiting a tool’s scope to a small dataset – like one policy as you mention – you can reduce the likelihood of such misbehaviours occurring since the generated responses only pull from that policy itself.

End-users can receive accurate answers while legal teams can reliably field all kinds of questions from just one tool.

Okay, final question: What do you think of the now famous/infamous Goldman Sachs’ statistic that over 40% of legal work will be automated by generative AI?

The technology’s certainly going to be disruptive.

Sure, there’ll be a reduction in the need for some manual tasks, but there’ll be new opportunities too, especially in legal operations teams. This’ll make innovation, and particularly those driving it, indispensable.

Resources like prompt engineering libraries will require managing, and we’ll need to be creating and documenting all these new systems and processes.

These new responsibilities coupled with new, streamlined ways of working will help people (who are currently overworked) enjoy their jobs a lot more! They’ll be less stressed and rather than being viewed as mere overhead, will become pivotal parts of their organisation.

Thank you, Brandi. We can’t wait to see what happens with the technology going forward!

Me too, and thank you. See you around!