Make Sure Your Legal AI Solution Adheres to Ethical AI Principles

Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is a new category of technology that has the potential to transform the way that law is practiced all over the world. The way your firm deploys Gen AI is crucial to your ability to serve clients most efficiently and effectively.

Many early adopters of this technology have learned to their dismay, as reported by Law360, that there are some important risks posed by attorneys’ reliance on commercially available general purpose AI tools. This has prompted a growing number of law firms to turn to a Legal AI solution, Gen AI tools trained specifically for the legal profession.

Still, not all of these Legal AI solutions are created the same. This makes it important for law firm leaders to identify the key features and functionalities to look for in a Legal AI product, including the crucial consideration of the ethical principles that should be followed in its development.

We recently published “The Definitive Guide to Choosing a Gen AI Legal Research Solution,” a free buyer’s guide that details what law firms and in-house legal departments should look for so they can select the most appropriate solution for their organization. One of the pillars we addressed in the guide is the importance of adherence to ethical AI principles.

What is “Responsible AI”?

Lawyers are already in tune with the importance of ethical considerations when it comes to Gen AI adoption. More than three-fourths (76%) of lawyers who responded to a Law360 Pulse survey earlier this year reported that they were concerned about AI’s imperfect grasp of legal ethics and standards, the number-one cited worry.

The best starting point for addressing this concern is to examine the ethics applied to the AI tool’s development: Make sure you are using a Legal AI tool that is grounded in “Responsible AI” development principles.

Responsible AI is an approach to developing and deploying artificial intelligence from both an ethical and legal standpoint, according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO explains that “the goal is to employ AI in a safe, trustworthy and ethical way” and that “using AI responsibly should increase transparency while helping to reduce issues such as AI bias.”

Responsible AI principles provide a critical foundation that ensures the Legal AI system producing outputs in response to your lawyers’ queries has been developed, deployed and governed to comply with all relevant ethics and laws. This is about more than just “doing the right thing”; it is an important risk management guardrail to increase confidence that the Legal AI solution your firm is using will avoid potential reputational and financial damages to your firm.

Questions to ask about Ethical AI principles

When evaluating a Legal AI solution, here are some questions to consider asking about the approach each provider has taken to ethical AI development:

• Do you have a formal responsible AI framework with defined principles and policies that guide your approach?
• How are ethics and compliance with laws and regulations addressed within your responsible AI policies?
• What processes do you have in place to monitor AI systems for unintended bias, fairness and other ethical risks?

For example, Lexis+ AI was developed adhering to the stringent Responsible AI Principles established by parent company RELX. These guidelines, which ensure the ethical and transparent development of AI systems that protect data privacy, mitigate bias and uphold intellectual property rights, include five components:

1. Be able to explain how the solution works
2. Prevent the creation or reinforcement of unfair bias
3. Accountability through human oversight
4. Respect privacy and champion data governance
5. Consider the real-world impact on people

Evaluate Lexis+ AI

Lexis+ AI is our breakthrough Gen AI platform that we believe will transform legal work by providing a suite of legal research, drafting, and summarization tools that delivers on the potential of Gen AI technology.

Lexis+ AI pairs our unsurpassed legal content with breakthrough Gen AI technology in a way that could redefine the way that legal research is conducted and legal work product is created. Its answers are grounded in the world’s largest repository of accurate and exclusive legal content from LexisNexis with industry-leading data security and attention to privacy. Request a free trial.

Download a free copy of the Definitive Guide to Choosing a Gen AI Legal Research Solution.

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