________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
measuring a return on investment is much harder. The simple point is that the industry’ s ambition should go beyond making disputes more efficient to manage.
Right now, much of the legal AI conversation focuses on accelerating existing processes: reviewing documents faster, summarizing evidence more quickly or drafting submissions in less time. Those improvements matter. Anyone who has worked on large-scale litigation understands how impressive that efficiency can be.
Efficiency is not enough
If AI simply helps lawyers process disputes faster while the volume of disputes continues to rise, we are solving the wrong problem. Particularly as self-serving lawyers may use AI to increase the volume of material to be considered, in order to wipe out any net saving to clients. Notably, 84 percent of in-house lawyers say they have seen no noticeable reduction in fees or billed hours attributable to AI adoption by law firms, and a further 11 percent report that fees have actually increased.
The more transformative opportunity is using AI to prevent disputes from escalating in the first place. The short point: good tools make disputes efficient, but great ones make them disappear. That is why I founded Aavalynx, an AI-driven capital and risk management tool that helps companies reduce dispute length and costs. Our codevelopment partners include Vodafone.
10