The Rise of AI Agents in the Practice of Law

Talk about AI agents is everywhere, but what are AI agents and how are they useful to lawyers?

An AI agent is an AI geared for a specific task. Its goal is to optimize human productivity by using computational power to overcome dense and large scale operations. Whether this results in an everyday assistant, as in Google’s Gemini 2.0, or an autonomous digital wallet manager, 2025 will be the year where we see an explosion of new AI agents on the marketplace.

AI Legal Agents

In law, AI agents are set to take over numerous administrative and analytic tasks. Here is a short list, just a few examples, of what AI agents could do for your law firm.

AI Privilege Review, Priv-Logs, and Redactions

AI agents not only draft documents, they also can QC pre-production data sets to ensure privileged documents do not fall through the cracks and get handed to the other side. Avoiding claw backs and the embarrassment of those phone calls can be worth the piece of mind of having an AI agent quickly do a priv scan. Priv logs in minutes, and redactions to follow. After a lawyer inputs sensitive information into an AI agent, it would be able to search documents by keywords and context, finding words, phrases, or sentences that need to be redacted. By automating this process, lawyers save themselves time and reduce the risk of human error.

AI Video Deposition Analysis - Behavioral Insights

Deposition analysis is a crucial part of the discovery phase in any lawsuit. The goal for both parties is to reach a settlement as soon as possible, saving precious money and time in the process. AI agents with the ability to analyze deposition videos can assist lawyers in finding the evidence they need to come to an agreement. By flagging facial expressions, vocal fluctuations, and behavioral trends, AI can quickly provide legal professionals with the patterns that they need to come to a conclusion.

AI Deposition Summaries & Transcript Analysis - Semantic Analysis

For deposition transcripts, LLM based AI’s have the capability to summarize hundreds of pages of trancripts in minutes, analyze the text, find crucial patterns, and present their findings in an organized manner. AI agents are more than capable of textual analysis. In fact, they are expert annotators. Instead of reading through transcripts, an AI agent interprets each word as a part of a data set, using its pattern analysis to find the key insights that lawyers need. Comparing testimony across depositions at scale can be done in a matter of seconds and minutes rather than hours/days/weeks.

AI Medical Chronologies

Medical chronologies can act as proof of doctor patient relationship or prior injury in any medical malpractice or injury suit. AI agents have the power to work through lengthy chronologies and come back with the piece of information that a lawyer requires to establish their case. Identifying gaps in documentation and anomalies between records and testimony, enabling attorneys to decide on which and how to use records, strategically.

AI Due Diligence

An AI agent can apply its analysis capabilities to the due diligence process, extracting data and potential red flags from large collections of documents. From its analysis, an Agent could provide a lawyer with a risk assessment, allowing them to proceed with confidence. Rights and obligation tables across terabytes of data? No problem - turn hours into minutes.

AI Billing and Timekeeping

AI agents can help lawyers keep track of hours worked by analyzing numerous related items such as emails, drafts, and calendar appointments. Implementation of AI timekeeping on a firm wide level would lead to advantages like predictive billing and efficiency reviews. By using information from previous cases AI agents can determine the amount of hours a case should take to work. AI agents can also highlight outliers, identifying areas where the firm could work with greater efficiency.

AI Powered Knowledge Departments

Knowledge departments are a vital part of any large law firm. They act as a nexus of legal information, allowing any team to access the knowledge needed to back up their case. AI agents could revolutionize knowledge departments by instantly filing or finding the desired information. In a hybrid work environment, accessing your knowledge department through the form of an AI powered search engine would be game changing.

AI Legal Research and Writing

An AI agent can use its computational power to keyword search massive legal databases for  specific statutes, laws, or precedent. Afterwards, it can draft (first drafts) routine legal documents like contracts, demand letters, and privilege logs modeling itself off the best practices and language conventions employed by lawyers. Handing off final drafting and review to the attorney in minutes.

AI Contract Drafting and Review

AI agents for contract drafting and review streamline legal workflows by generating precise, context-aware contract language and identifying potential risks instantly. These intelligent systems analyze clauses, flag inconsistencies, and suggest optimizations, ensuring compliance and reducing negotiation time. By leveraging AI-driven automation, legal teams can enhance accuracy, accelerate deal cycles, and focus on high-value strategic work.

Why 2025 Will be the Year of AI Legal Agents

These are only a few ways that AI agents could enhance legal productivity. As the technology advances, and leaders in AI work towards artificial general intelligence, it will be fascinating to see how AI agents are implemented in legal practices. Stay posted. 2025 will be an exceptional year for AI legal agents.

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