Last 12 months, as ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence chatbots took the world by storm, ASML – the Dutch maker of chip-making equipment – ​​saw a possibility to rent a “prompt engineer” to make use of the technology in its in-house legal department.
In a Post on LinkedInDouwe Groenevelt, ASML's deputy general counsel, said he envisioned “a brand new potential role that might bridge the gap between AI and our legal team.” The position was in search of a candidate who could write generative AI prompts – the queries that should be fed into an AI tool to provide the specified output – and train colleagues.
The only catch: the job didn’t exist.
As Groenevelt has since explained, the intention behind this post, which received greater than 200 likes and around 30 comments, was to contribute to the discussion concerning the way forward for legal roles within the age of generative AI.
But now, this month, the job has turn out to be a reality. ASML has posted an actual position in its in-house legal department for a Legal Prompt Engineer, the primary of its kind. The company has concluded that, given the rapid development of AI tools, a dedicated position is warranted.
And the creation of this role is indicative of how the company legal occupation is changing to embrace the advantages of generative AI as firms around the globe explore the risks and opportunities of this technology.
Generative AI will fundamentally change the legal industry as an entire, says Sandrine Auffret, chief legal advisor at ASML.
Lawyers have been using other sorts of AI for years, similar to in the shape of contract management and e-discovery tools. But generative AI is different, Auffret says, since it “actually seems to have the potential to rework our legal service delivery model and have a much greater impact in the method.”
The large language models utilized by generative AI are “extremely good at automating and improving all text-based activities,” she says, “and the actual fact is that a variety of legal activities are largely text-based.”
ASML expects the technology to save lots of its internal legal team a major period of time – greater than every other tool it has ever implemented, says Auffret. But it’s going to also increase effectiveness and repair quality.
The A&O Shearman team was one in all the primary to check out the ContractMatrix tool launched by law firm A&O Shearman late last 12 months, Groenevelt says. Today, around 15 of the group's roughly 100 in-house lawyers use the generative AI-powered tool to draft and review contracts, he notes.
“The team's initial feedback shows that the tool not only saves us time when drafting texts, but additionally improves the standard of the texts,” says Groenevelt. The tool might be asked to suggest alternative clauses, which also “encourages legal creativity,” he adds.
Groenevelt says experienced lawyers profit more from the tool than young lawyers, who could also be more easily impressed by the initial results and fewer inclined to pressure test them. He stresses that “human oversight stays essential.”
Other corporate legal departments have focused on experimenting with generative AI internally fairly than hiring specialists.
For example, Conduent, an expert services company spun off from Xerox in 2016, explored the opportunity of making a dedicated AI position inside its internal legal department: an issue expert to review using AI throughout the department and across the corporate. But the corporate quickly realized that this was the improper approach for the corporate, says General Counsel Michael Krawitz, because generative AI touched many sensitive areas of the corporate.
So as a substitute of hiring a single person, the corporate arrange a working group of internal experts with different specialties – similar to mental property, regulatory compliance, data protection and risk management – ​​to check the applying of the technology and appropriate security precautions.
Like ASML, Conduent, which has about 50 in-house lawyers, is experimenting with using generative artificial intelligence in its contract work.
“We began a pilot (of a contract tool) because we thought it will help us discover clauses that didn’t meet our standards, however the technology didn’t meet our standards,” Krawitz reports. The pilot flagged contract clauses as “compliant” after they weren’t, which was concerning, he explains.
Nevertheless, Krawitz says: “I still have hope that this function will work well soon.” At the moment, nonetheless, it’s “distracting and expensive.”
However, Conduent has had higher experiences using a translation program based on generative artificial intelligence: when working with clients around the globe, the corporate was capable of speed up the review and approval of contracts.
Krawitz recalls that in 2022, as ChatGPT became more widely used, some legal departments considered banning its use.
“I believe that's the improper tone,” he argues. A greater approach can be “to indicate that we’re working with generative AI and that we’re doing it in a way that protects our ideas, our data and our people,” he says.
According to a report by PwC, there’s also a financial incentive for lawyers to make use of AI.
The skilled services firm's AI Jobs Barometer, released in May 2024, found a wage premium of 49 percent within the U.S. and 27 percent within the U.K. for lawyers with AI skills.
“This is a sign of the growing importance of AI skills within the legal sector,” says Sandeep Agrawal, legal business solutions partner at PwC UK. “The way forward for in-house legal teams is prone to be characterised by a various mixture of roles, with AI-trained lawyers working alongside engineers and computer scientists.”
But right away, many corporate legal departments are only starting to explore this technology, says Amy Yeung, former deputy general counsel at U.S. student loan company Sallie Mae who has held several senior and executive positions in corporate legal.
Because generative AI relies on large amounts of knowledge, it comes with risks, she explains. “Implicit biases in data sets or in the method, for instance, are amplified by generative AI.” Yeung says a comprehensive understanding of knowledge management is important to mitigating these risks.
However, as more in-house legal departments recognize collaboration between lawyers and technical experts, the advantages of this collaboration are prone to turn out to be more well known across organizations.
“Integrating AI into internal teams not only changes the composition of those teams, but additionally redefines the worth they convey,” says Agrawal.
