S&C Senior Chair Joe Shenker discussed the development of AI technology for legal work at S&C with The American Lawyer. Joe has been exploring uses for AI at the Firm since 2015, leading to S&C’s joint incubation of and investment in LAER AI, a venture by Cornell and Carnegie Mellon post-doctoral researchers who work out of the Firm’s New York office.
“My dream,” said Joe, “is that an AI machine sits with every firm lawyer at deposition or trial, having digested the case already, and listens to the testimony, seeking for truthful or false answers, and then suggests questions for the lawyers.” The product is a dynamic, constantly updatable repository of all the facts and information discovered or unearthed about a case or investigation. It can answer in real time in normal language any questions relating to this repository of information, with the added advantage that it will cite the source of its knowledge, which avoids hallucination.
One product in use, called AIDA or AI Discovery Assistant, does first-level document review and was trained on old cases. It is employed on premises, securely and privately. Joe said it has sped up the discovery process dramatically and freed up people. Another product in development is a deposition assistant, which could flag pauses, unusual body language or discomfort in real time and reference documents relevant to those statements. An AI litigation assistant in development could help with early case assessment, drafting, case chronology and creating substantive questions for attorney use.
Joe said he doesn’t see these AI products affecting the Firm’s attorney hiring. “We’ve always been focused on high-end work and this just frees people up to do more high-end work,” he said.
Read “Sullivan & Cromwell's Investments in AI Lead to Discovery, Deposition ‘Assistants’”