How AI Legal Document Review Drives Faster Case Prep

Reviewing legal documents is undeniably tedious.

However, while it may be time-consuming, legal document review is also essential for building a strong case strategy and effectively preparing for trial. And, because even the most tenured lawyer can make mistakes or miss important details, it has to be effective and thorough.

In this post, we’ll examine everything you need to know about AI for legal document review—from the basics of AI technology to best practices for implementing it responsibly and effectively at your firm.

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What is AI legal document review

AI for legal document review uses artificial intelligence to quickly analyze, sort, and identify key information from legal documents. It streamlines the review process and allows for improved accuracy by using AI to automatically take care of the most time-consuming review work.

AI for legal document review can automate legal document review, enhance your eDiscovery process, quickly find relevant case law or legal opinions, analyze vast legal databases in minutes, and more—ultimately saving you time while helping you build a substantial, well-supported case.

While there are many different tools available to facilitate the process, AI for legal document review typically uses AI technologies to identify patterns and relationships between documents and categorize documents. These may include:

• Machine learning for uncovering patterns and connections between documents
• Natural language processing for analyzing and interpreting text
• Optical character recognition for turning scanned or handwritten content into searchable digital text
• Retrieval-augmented generation for improving the quality of LLM-generated responses by grounding the model on external sources of knowledge.

Types of AI legal document review

There are two primary types of AI for legal document review: technology assisted review (TAR) and generative AI.

Technology assisted review (TAR)

Technology assisted review is currently the most widely-used subset of tools for AI for legal document review. It’s used to review and categorize documents, particularly in the eDiscovery process, where many courts accept TAR. TAR uses software and machine learning to help lawyers review, analyze, and prioritize large quantities of documents to save lawyers time.

For example, when using TAR, a lawyer may tag documents in a sample set as relevant or not relevant. Learning from these examples provided by the human input, the TAR program will predict the relevance of the remaining documents in the set.

While TAR can help legal professionals speed up the process of document review—which can, in turn, reduce the cost and time spent on manual review—it does have limitations.

For one, the strength and effectiveness of TAR’s output depends on the quality of the initial training set. For another, TAR is focused primarily on structured text-heavy documents for review, like emails or Word documents. This means it can’t accommodate other common types and mediums of data that need to be reviewed, such as videos.

Generative AI

While the technology is still emerging, legal teams are increasingly adopting generative AI tools—which can generate content like text and images based on certain prompts or inputs—to assist with document review.

Generative AI can do more than categorize and prioritize text-based documents: Generative AI tools can process, analyze, and review many different types of data, such as documents, text messages, and social media posts. It can also generate summaries, assist with document drafting, and offer a more in-depth interpretation of content.

Still, generative AI also has its limitations for legal document review. As a newer, developing technology, it’s less widely accepted in courts than TAR tools. Generative AI is also prone to AI hallucinations, which can lead to plausible but inaccurate or unsupported outputs, making human oversight essential when using it in legal contexts.

Some examples of tools for AI for legal document review include:

• Logikcull, which integrates with Clio, is an eDiscovery platform that can assist with automated document review, eDiscovery, and document organization.
• Everlaw is an eDiscovery software that uses AI to automate document review and administrative tasks, create document summaries, and assist with case narratives.
• Harvey AI is a broad AI legal platform for legal professionals and their workflows. While it’s not specifically focused on legal document review, Harvey can help generate insights, recommendations, and predictions based on data.
• Clio Duo helps you accelerate your casework, from completing everyday tasks to transforming information into actionable insights. Our newest product automates routine tasks, prioritizes your day, and helps you work smarter.

How does AI legal document review help with case prep?

Case prep takes time, but AI can assist with some of its most labor-intensive parts by streamlining legal document review and analyzing large volumes of documents with speed and precision. This frees up more time to focus on creating a winning case for your clients.

Using AI makes it easier and faster to sift through documents to

• Conduct efficient eDiscovery: AI tools, like TAR, can speed up and streamline the eDiscovery process by automating the identification, classification, and prioritization of electronic documents used for evidence in legal cases. This makes it faster for lawyers to retrieve, identify, and review relevant documents as needed for eDiscovery. Plus, AI tools can classify documents automatically and extract entities, such as names, dates, and places, so you get information quickly and accurately.
• Create document summaries: Lawyers can use AI tools to pull key points from long documents and turn them into quick overviews. By reading these concise summaries instead of every document in full, you can better prioritize and streamline document review for case prep.
• Generate and draft documents: Generative AI tools can analyze existing documents, find patterns, and use that information to create initial drafts of legal documents like pleadings, statements of facts, and responses. By generating initial drafts quickly, AI helps lawyers get started more easily while freeing up time for revisions and customization.
• Translation: By quickly and efficiently translating legal documents, AI translation tools make it more accessible to work with documents in multiple languages. This saves time and expense with manual translation and helps reduce communication barriers.
• Build case narratives: AI can assist with creating case narratives by analyzing case files and documents, extracting relevant facts, and organizing them into an easy-to-understand narrative. This helps lawyers build case arguments and prepare for trials more quickly (and, in case you didn’t know, Clio Duo also builds timelines from legal documents).

Best practices for implementing AI for legal document review

AI offers plenty of big benefits for streamlining legal document review, but—as with any AI solution for lawyers—it also comes with unique risks and ethical considerations.

Before leveraging AI technology for legal document review, it’s essential to be up-to-date on the relevant ethical issues (our post on ethical considerations in law is a good place to start). And, if your firm doesn’t have a structured AI policy, create one—this guide to creating a law firm AI policy can help.

You’ll also want to consider the following best practices for using AI for legal document review:

• Establish clear guidelines for usage: Create straightforward standards for exactly how and when AI tools will be used for document review at your firm. You should know what types of documents should and shouldn’t be reviewed using AI and how the AI outputs will be managed.
• Ensure a human is always checking the work: It’s one of the most important things to remember when using AI in law: No matter how advanced AI technology may be, human oversight is always essential to ensure accuracy and reliability. For legal document review, this means always reviewing the results and double-checking source material and citations to spot any errors and nuances that AI may not pick up on.
• Put privacy and security measures in place to protect sensitive legal data: For lawyers, the duty to confidentiality and to keep sensitive legal data safe is non-negotiable. It’s important to be cautious and proactive when working with tech tools like AI by implementing strong privacy and robust security protocols. Learn more about law firm data security here.
• Adhere to legal ethics: Be sure to vet AI tools to ensure they comply with ethical standards for the legal industry and rules set out by your bar association.
• Implement training programs: It’s one thing to have good policies and procedures set up for AI tools, but they’re only effective if everyone using them knows how to use them and is up to date—which can be challenging as AI technology is always improving. Ensure there’s ongoing training on the limitations, capabilities, and best practices for AI tools.

Things to consider when evaluating tools for AI legal document review

If you’re ready to implement an AI solution to help with legal document review, it’s important to vet your options carefully. In addition to evaluating potential tools for their security, cost, and customer reviews, you’ll want to consider the following:

• What does your firm really need? How much document review does your firm do, and what review tasks could you use the most help with? Consider the typical volume and complexity of documents you work with so you can look for tools that can handle what you need. For example, choose tools with advanced natural language processing and machine learning capabilities to assist with tasks like eDiscovery and look for tools with generative AI to help generate summaries.
• How much will it cost the firm? AI tools absolutely have the potential to alleviate a law firm’s workload, but the cost of these tools are considerable depending on their use.
• Is it easy to use? Look for AI tools with a user-friendly interface that everyone on your team can navigate. You can also consider if you may need any custom features or options to adapt the tool to your firm’s specific requirements, such as the ability to tag certain types of documents, custom reporting, or advanced search capabilities.
• Does it work with your existing systems? Choosing tools that integrate seamlessly with your existing software and systems (such as case management software like Clio) can unlock further time savings and improve overall efficiency in your day.

No, AI won’t replace lawyers

Rest assured, AI is not coming for legal professionals’ jobs: AI assists with rather than replaces human legal work.

In fact, not embracing the potential of AI technology may leave you at risk of being left behind by your competition. As the latest Legal Trends Report found, the vast majority of lawyers use AI, with 79% of lawyers adopting AI in some capacity.

Tools related to legal document review are among the most commonly adopted by legal professionals, with document drafting (18%), eDiscovery (12%), and contract review (11%) ranking among the top AI solutions being adopted by the legal industry, according to the Legal Trends Report.

AI is shifting the structure of legal work by using AI technology to automate mundane tasks and handle large document volumes with document review. This enables lawyers to focus on higher-value and strategic work. Over time, this shift improves efficiency, productivity, and client outcomes.

Final thoughts on AI legal document review

AI has the power to transform legal document review by automating monotonous processes and extracting valuable insights from vast data sets. Rather than spending hours poring over emails, contracts, or discovery documents, you can focus on strategy and client advocacy. The result? Faster case prep, reduced costs, and improved outcomes.

Ready to simplify your document workflow?

Clio Draft can help you automate legal document creation and expedite the signing process—saving hours and boosting your firm’s productivity.

Can AI analyze legal documents?

AI can analyze legal documents in several ways. Certain AI tools can quickly and efficiently review, categorize, and pull key information from large quantities of legal documents like case files and discovery documents. This analysis may include summarizing content, flagging inconsistencies or potential risks, or identifying relevant details.

Is there an AI tool to create legal documents?

Many AI tools are designed to create drafts of legal documents like contracts and pleadings. These tools typically analyze existing data and use natural language processing and machine learning to quickly create initial drafts, which legal professionals can then review and revise.

We published this blog post in January 2025. Last updated: January 13, 2025.

Categorized in: Technology