Image
courtesy
of
NetDocuments.
As
we
close
in
on
the
second
anniversary
of
ChatGPT’s
release,
the
generative
AI
conversation
—
at
least
when
it
comes
to
the
legal
industry
—
is
starting
to
shift.
After
a
year
or
so
of
fretting
about
generative
AI
hallucinating
like
it
dropped
bad
acid
and
trying
to
figure
out
newer
and
better
legal
offerings,
autumn
has
ushered
a
new
narrative
as
the
AI
discourse
matures
and
providers
focus
on
taking
generative
AI
and
improving
the
whole
experience
of
using
the
tool.
This
emphasis
on
practical
integration
and
respecting
everyday
legal
workflows
dominating
this
week’s
NetDocuments
Inspire
Conference.
“It’s
not
about
bringing
content
to
your
AI,
but
about
bringing
AI
to
your
content,”
CEO
Josh
Baxter
explained
as
the
show
kicked
off.
The
era
of
lawyers
taking
material
and
feeding
it
into
external
AI-driven
applications
has
to
end.
“What
does
it
look
like
if
you
have
to
take
your
content
to
AI.
It
looks
like
you’re
starting
to
stand
up
a
bunch
of
point
solutions
to
solve
each
individual
problem.
And
its
not
a
scalable
approach.
It
created
governance
issues
and
security
risks
for
your
organization,
it
creates
an
environment
where
you’re
dealing
with
multiple
vendors
your
costs
start
to
pile
up,
the
workflow
and
the
experience
for
your
end
users
is
frustrating
and
inefficient.”
An
analogy
that
kept
coming
up
is
the
increasingly
disjointed
experience
with
streaming
services
with
users
hunting
and
pecking
between
apps
searching
for
a
single
show.
But
TVs
that
have
indexed
everything
and
can
jump
to
the
right
service
for
the
show
when
asked
make
the
user’s
experience
better.
The
company’s
guiding
mantra
to
build
an
“intelligent
document
management
system”
envisions
a
bunch
of
features,
but
the
most
straightforward
is
the
most
significant.
Taking
a
firm’s
corpus
of
documents
and
employing
semantic
search
to
deliver
the
material
a
lawyer
needs,
not
necessarily
the
material
that
they
can
pick
the
right
keywords
to
capture.
With
an
auto-profiling
capability,
Chief
Product
Officer
Dan
Hauck
explained,
NetDocs
will
be
able
to
vectorize
documents
in
real
time
to
empower
these
common
sense
searches.
So
when
a
lawyer
takes
a
new,
say,
deposition
transcript
dropped
into
the
system
and
enriches
the
document
so
it
doesn’t
get
missed
because
someone
forgot
to
tag
it
appropriately
at
the
time
or
crafted
the
wrong
query
down
the
road.
Earlier
this
year,
in
the
eDiscovery
context,
I
mused
that
generative
AI’s
most
powerful
application
might
be
as
a
user
experience
tool.
Lawyers
being
able
to
type
out
natural,
common
sense
queries
and
the
system
fill
in
all
those
nuanced
gaps
that
seniors
depend
(successfully
or
not)
upon
juniors
to
figure
out.
Applying
this
to
the
document
management
context
opens
the
door
for
a
more
simple
and
meaningful
interrogation
of
a
firm’s
stored
knowledge.
NetDocuments
also
introduced
the
ndMAX
Legal
AI
Assistant,
promising
to
provide
answers
and
insights
directly
within
the
document
management
system.
This
tool,
currently
in
beta,
will
be
available
by
the
end
of
the
year.
Issues
List
Generator
automatically
compiles
key
issues
from
contracts
or
case
files,
allowing
for
a
more
focused
review.
The
transactional
side
isn’t
left
out
of
the
fun,
with
the
Contract
Playbook
Generator
creating
customized
negotiation
playbooks
complete
with
clause
suggestions
and
fallback
positions,
while
the
Due
Diligence
app
automates
document
review
in
mergers
and
acquisitions,
flagging
risks
for
thorough
analysis.
This
is
all
on
top
of
the
apps
that
users
are
crafting
themselves
inside
the
system.
For
those,
NetDocuments
announced
a
new
import/export
feature
allowing
apps
built
inside
one
repository
to
be
moved
to
another
easily
without
requiring
a
new
build.
All
of
which
is
to
reiterate
that
the
narrative
around
legal
industry
AI
has
moved
toward
improving
the
user
experience,
embedding
AI
in
ways
that
deliver
meaningful,
practical
results.
An
enabler
of
efficiency
and
accuracy,
without
requiring
a
steep
learning
curve
or
technological
juggling
—
perhaps
without
even
requiring
the
user
to
realize
that
they’re
using
AI
to
get
these
answers.
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law
and
co-host
of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
Feel
free
to email
any
tips,
questions,
or
comments.
Follow
him
on Twitter or
Bluesky
if
you’re
interested
in
law,
politics,
and
a
healthy
dose
of
college
sports
news.
Joe
also
serves
as
a
Managing
Director
at
RPN
Executive
Search.