AI for Legal Documents: The Ultimate Tool for Supporting Your Legal Strategy

Summary:

• Use AI to Perfect Your Legal Documents
• Identifying Winning Arguments with Brief Analysis
• Try AI on Lexis+

This article was originally published on August 2, 2022, and was updated on March 16, 2023. 

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the fast-paced, high-stakes world of litigation has delivered huge gains in efficiency for practitioners. If you're not already using AI to support your strategy in the courtroom, you should start exploring how it can help you save time and sharpen your competitive edge. There are a few ways you might use AI to strengthen your legal strategy, including: 

• Conducting legal research
• Managing case workflow
• Drafting documents

This article focuses primarily on drafting documents. Specifically, we'll take a look at Brief Analysis — an AI-enhanced tool that can "read for you" to quickly spot strong case authority and, ultimately, help you write a winning brief. First, we'll provide an overview of the tool and the AI techniques it uses; then, we'll tell you exactly how you can use its ability to spot a strong argument to your advantage. 

Use AI to Perfect Your Legal Documents 

Brief Analysis, which is available exclusively on Lexis+®, allows you to quickly analyze a legal document, such as a brief (including your opponent's briefs), or to compare documents. 

To get started, upload or drag and drop the document of your choice into the tool.

View of Brief Analysis Upload Screen

Brief Analysis will then use AI techniques like natural language processing and machine learning to identify key legal concepts and terms within your document before searching the Lexis+ database for relevant cases and statutes. Your results are then populated on a dashboard report which provides you with a simple visual snapshot of various ways to improve the brief before you file it with the court. The dashboard includes:

• Procedural information and applied jurisdictions
• Recommendations for other legal materials to consider
• Citation report powered by Shepard's® Citation Service
• Quote Check
• Similar Briefs
  • Winning Briefs

All of these features provide valuable information, but for the purposes of this article, we'll focus on how to quickly spot winning briefs in the "Similar Briefs" section, as well as how this can be used to your advantage. 

View Brief Analysis Guided Tour

Identifying Winning Arguments with Brief Analysis

Use the filters in Brief Analysis to narrow your list of “Similar Briefs” to only include winning briefs in the set of results. This feature allows you to surface previously filed briefs in similar cases that were successful to the desired outcome in that case. You can then view the text of that brief and analyze the content to see if there are opportunities to improve your own legal document; two ways you can use the data provided within this feature to garner deeper insight are discussed below.  

Example of a Flagged Winning Brief

View Winning Language

When viewing a winning brief, easily link out to Context^®* for more information about the language used. Additionally, see the judge’s name, the attorney who wrote the brief and the law firm that filed the brief, allowing you to assess the reliability and relevance of the brief to your own case circumstances.

See Motion History

See the Motion History of similar briefs in order to help you better understand the procedural timeline and outcome.

Motion history is useful intelligence to consider even if the identified briefs were not associated with a successful outcome, because it provides you with a visual representation of that motion’s journey from inception to resolution. This provides insights to help you anticipate where your own motions may go and how long they may take to be resolved.

Ultimately, you can use these features on Brief Analysis to:

• Start a new brief and make sure the document contains the strongest winning arguments prior to filing it with the court;
• Double-check a thoroughly researched draft brief to verify that nothing is missed or overlooked in the document; and
• Review an opponent’s brief to discover strengths, weaknesses or openings that were successfully attacked by previous winning briefs.

Try AI on Lexis+

If you're not already exploring the ways AI can help you win in court, it's a good time to start. With new and improving AI-powered technologies on the rise, there's never been a better time to take improve your legal documents. 

LexisNexis is here to help you strengthen your legal strategy with effective, time-saving, and user-friendly artificial intelligence. Contact us to learn more about Brief Analysis on Lexis+ or click below to experience it for yourself. 

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