Delegating to Reduce Your Clients’ Costs

Are you struggling to reduce your clients’ costs? Depending on your area of practice, there may be some different strategies you can try implementing. There is one strategy that can work across the board, especially for litigators.

Efficiently delegating to your paralegal.

Legal Administrative Assistants and other support staff can also be included, but for now let’s focus on paralegals.

Depending on the firm structure and area of practice, paralegals either bill their time or they don’t. Either way, their billable rate is less than a lawyer’s rate so by delegating efficiently to a paralegal, the client’s cost can be significantly reduced.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

You probably already delegate to some extent, but have you wondered if you are doing it properly? This is often the part that is overlooked.

Lawyers often seem to take one of two approaches to delegating:

1. Keeping the paralegal in the loop from the beginning so they know what is happening on the file, or

2. Only including the paralegal when tasks need to be done, and keeping them out of the loop otherwise.

The first approach lets the paralegal know where things are at on a file and what tasks they need to do.

Paralegals have advance notice on deadlines and can organize their schedules to better manage their time, making last-minute delegation an exception rather than the rule. As a result, they can manage their capacity better and take on more tasks to help out the lawyer. It provides an opportunity for the paralegal to diarize properly and stay on top of what is happening or what needs to happen on a file. This means not as much time needs to be invested by the lawyer on explaining things to the paralegal, or working on tasks that they could have delegated. It also means that the paralegal has time to do their best work and build their expertise, leading to less reviewing and revising being required by the lawyer. This approach leads to more efficient delegation and reduced client costs.

The second approach leads to less planning and a lot more last-minute delegation. By taking this approach, the lawyer often ends up having to do tasks that they could have otherwise delegated because the paralegal is already occupied, or they feel that it will be quicker if they do it themselves. Even if the paralegal is assigned the task, they will be more rushed, and require more review and revision from the lawyer. This can also lead to higher chances of mistakes and the need for amendments, in addition to the running risk of missed deadlines or additional time being spent on asking for extended deadlines. Instead of reducing the costs, this approach can potentially lead to additional costs, along with more pressure being put on the lawyer and paralegal.

So how can you implement the first approach?

Here are some strategies:

„ Including paralegals in all relevant emails from the point a file is opened.

„ Briefing paralegals after court related hearings/appearances.

„ Creating a master file list so everyone on the team knows the status on files.

„ Providing detailed instructions with deadlines when delegating tasks.

„ Developing precedents and templates to make delegating easier.

Overall, clear communication between the lawyer and paralegal is important for increased efficiency. Once an efficient system is created, it leads to more proactive opportunities for the paralegal and more opportunities for the lawyer to use their time wisely on tasks they cannot delegate.

Through efficient delegation, lawyers can increase their productivity on a client’s file while simultaneously reducing their costs.

What happens when a robot commits a tort? In the BC Law Institute’s Artificial Intelligence and Civil Liability Project, an interdisciplinary committee combining expertise in law, computer science, medicine, and engineering is considering how tort law needs to adapt to provide redress for harm caused by artificial intelligence (“AI”). AI is used now in a vast and rapidly growing range of applications. To an increasing extent, AI is taking the place of human decision-makers. AI surpasses human capabilities in some tasks, but is not infallible.

Applying common law tort principles developed in light of human reasoning and conduct to AIrelated harm is far from straightforward. The nature of AI is such that harm it may cause to persons and property in pursuing its programmed objectives may be unrelated to any identifiable defect in its design, programming, or pre-deployment handling. This raises difficult legal and policy issues about causation, fault, foreseeability, and where liability should rest. BCLI will issue a consultation paper in spring 2023 on proposed reform to address these challenges, and wants to hear your views. For more information and to download the consultation paper when it is issued, visit: bcli.org/project/artificialintelligence-and-civil-liability-project.

HASTINGS

In 1997, IBM’s “Deep Blue” beat world champion Garry Kasparov. In 2018, “OpenAI Five,” five separate AI agents working together, beat a team of professional players at the e-sport Dota 2.

In 2021, OpenAI released “DALL-E 2,” an AI-driven image-generation platform. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released a free research preview of ChatGPT, an interface to its “GPT-4” language model, which allows users to receive answers in text form. ChatGPT also has access to publicly available information, to a cutoff in 2021.

The below quote was generated by ChatGPT, in response to the prompt: “Summarize the biggest changes likely to occur in the legal services industry as a result of artificial intelligence in the next five years. Keep your response under 450 words. Provide sources, omit links.” The article image was generated by DALL-E 2, in response to a prompt suggested by ChatGPT to exemplify the points ChatGPT raised in relation to the future of AI in the legal profession.

“It is difficult to predict with certainty the exact changes that will occur in the legal services industry as a result of artificial intelligence in the next five years, as the rate of technological advancement can be unpredictable. However, here are some changes that may occur, along with sources for further information:

1. CONTINUED AUTOMATION OF ROUTINE TASKS: AI is expected to continue automating a number of tasks currently carried out by lawyers and paralegals, such as document review, legal research, and contract analysis. This will enable lawyers to work more efficiently and focus on higher-value tasks that require more complex analysis and judgment. According to a report by Deloitte, the use of AI in the legal industry could lead to a 20-30% reduction in the amount of time that lawyers spend on routine tasks (Deloitte, “Artificial Intelligence in Law”).

2. WIDESPREAD ADOPTION OF AI-POWERED LEGAL RESEARCH TOOLS: AI-powered legal research tools are expected to become more prevalent in the coming years, providing lawyers with more accurate and up-todate information than is currently available through traditional legal research methods. A report by the American Bar Association found that AI-powered legal research tools could significantly reduce the time that lawyers spend on legal research and improve the accuracy and completeness of their research (American Bar Association, “The Future of Law: Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Industry”).

3. CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS: AI-powered predictive analytics are expected to be used more widely in the legal industry to predict the outcomes of legal cases based on past precedent and other relevant data. This could help lawyers to better advise their clients on the likelihood of success in a particular case and could also help to reduce the time and cost of legal proceedings. A report by the Rand Corporation found that the use of predictive analytics in the legal industry could lead to more efficient and cost-effective legal proceedings (Rand Corporation, “Predictive Analytics in the Legal Industry”).

Other changes that may occur in the next five years include improved access to legal services through the use of chatbots and virtual assistants, and the need to address ethical concerns related to the use of AI in the legal system. However, it is important to note that these changes are not certain, and the legal industry may evolve in ways that are currently difficult to predict.”

Though impressive, there are limitations. It took me 11 attempts to get the quote the way I wanted: creating a response to fit into a word count was challenging for ChatGPT, which instead often truncated longer responses. The citations also appear incorrect, but I’m not sure that issue isn’t on my end.

ChatGPT is not a law-specific AI, and yet can return a reasonably good and lightning fast starting point for legal research, even with paragraph citations if you ask.

My prediction: as ChatGPT says, AI-lawyers like DoNoPay’s aren’t replacing us any time soon, but AI-assisted lawyering is just getting started.