I Can't Use Technology Unless It Gives Me Perfect Results
Outside counsel has this unwarranted notion that information has to be “perfect” in-order for it to drive value to their clients. They believe their clients will accept nothing less, but this notion could not be further from the truth.
On the other hand, in-house counsels are quickly becoming sophisticated business people with a clear understanding of risk and risk tolerance. They are increasingly asked to find creative solutions to problems so as not to stop business transactions from progressing. It is not enough to say that a transaction may be risky; counsel must give insight into how to quantify that risk, and whether that risk has been tolerated by the organization in the past.When it comes to applying artificial intelligence to corporate transactions, most in-house counsel are satisfied with two basic principles: can I find the document I need when I need it, and can I pull the relevant information quickly?
Some of the objectives of eDiscovery, like finding certain documents and pulling out relevant information, simply won't work for corporate transactions. Clustering and removing of seemingly identical documents can lead to catastrophic events if the like documents are simply different by the word “not.” Imagine this: you bucket two like contracts and identify them as standard because the clustering technology says they are extremely similar. Upon further inspection, you find the two clauses to read, “Party A shall be liable for any damages arising from negligent performance.” The near duplicate reads, “Party A shall not be liable for any damages arising from negligent performance.” If those were both put to the side as standard, someone may have just lost his or her job.
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