AI in Law Firms: The Citation Trap
AI can review a contract in minutes. It can also invent a court case.
Lawyers spend huge amounts of time reading, comparing, and drafting. That's exactly what AI is good at. It can check a contract against a firm's standard positions, summarize a long deposition, or build a timeline from a case file.
But there's a trap. General AI tools write text that sounds right, and when asked for legal authority, they can produce case citations that look real and don't exist. In a widely reported 2023 case in New York, lawyers were sanctioned for filing exactly that.
Safer systems work differently. They only search sources the firm has approved, and every citation must link to a real document.
The best starting points are low risk: time capture, summaries, and first-pass contract review.