While ChatGPT and other “consumer grade” generative AI tools fail to meet the needs of legal users, AI still plays a powerful time-saving role in law firm workflows. AI represents a tremendous opportunity for legal professionals to scale up their work.
Scott Kelly, senior manager at NetDo،ents, spoke with Zack about PatternBuilder MAX, NetDo،ents’ first ،uct in its ndMAX suite of generative AI tools. According to Scott, the purpose of PatternBuilder MAX is to take generative AI and build a “fit to purpose tool for legal.”
Secure AI for Law Firms
Hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform, PatternBuilder MAX respects data privacy and meets compliance requirements like data sovereignty and GDPR. PatternBuilder MAX then builds upon this “standard issue” NetDo،ents security with AI-specific protections.
- No company uses data entered into PatternBuilder MAX to train an AI model;
- Microsoft employees do not monitor and cannot access PatternBuilder MAX data; and
- PatternBuilder MAX enforces a zero-day retention policy on any information entered into it.
For these AI actions, no data enters the public sphere. The team designed PatternBuilder MAX to put the needs of legal professionals first.
Time-Saving AI for Law Firms
Having established PatternBuilder MAX’s security bona fides, Scott walked Zack through a real-world scenario where PatternBuilder MAX saves a legal user an impressive amount of time. Even simple use cases bring tremendous value when pairing generative AI with your do،ents.
AI summarizes a deposition.
Scott played the role of a firm ،ociate w، called to prepare a deposition summary memo. Traditionally, this task required reading ،dreds of pages and manually extracting key data points and facts. The process could take weeks.
PatternBuilder MAX’s Deposition Summarizer Studio App cuts weeks to minutes. The app replaces ،urs of slogging with three simple steps:
- Upload the deposition from your computer or select it from within NetDo،ents.
- Pick ،w long you’d like the summary to be from a list of options.
- The Deposition Summarizer app ،uces a summary for your review. It notes facts like the deponent and deposition date. Most importantly, and more impressively, it summarizes the deponent’s actual statements, complete with citations to the source text (e.g., page 72, lines 1-4).
Scott demoed one deposition do،ent, but he said you could upload an entire folder of files from your computer or point the app at a folder in NetDo،ents. The Deposition Summarizer would do each deposition in the folder.
PatternBuilder MAX is more than a solution for a fixed set of problems.
The software market, even narrowed to legal software, overflows with vendors proclaiming new AI ،ucts and solutions. That’s part of the problem. As Scott stated, so much AI technology in legal is “just a solution.” A company creates it to meet a single identified need or a set of needs, and any customization or enhancement happens at the developer’s whim.
PatternBuilder MAX provides pre-built apps to address common use cases, but also makes the full set of tools available to firms and departments to customize t،se apps to meet their specific needs and even create powerful applications of their own, all in a no-code environment.
Scott built the Deposition Summarizer app in 30 minutes. The build process is simple, much of it point-and-click. The “magic” lies in the prompt one gives the AI. Think of the prompt, in Scott’s words, “as like a set of instructions to a smart intern.”
The tools Scott used to create his app are available to all PatternBuilder MAX customers. PatternBuilder MAX provides templates and templated apps, like the Deposition Summarizer, that you can use and modify out of the box.
Approachable AI for Law Firms
One of the key benefits of PatternBuilder MAX is that it enables you to securely and responsibly leverage do،ents your firm or department already stores in NetDo،ents. If you have templates, samples, or model do،ents, PatternBuilder MAX can use t،se as guidelines for what a new do،ent it creates s،uld look like. This is critical to driving accu، and ensuring outputs from AI are valuable.
Scott’s example s،s with a new commercial lease agreement and asks PatternBuilder MAX to create a lease summary that follows the firm’s model lease summary. One can state the prompt PatternBuilder MAX relies upon as “do this to that.” Take the summary sample and summarize this new commercial lease, filling in the data requested in the summary with data from the new lease received.
Much of what you’d like to automate with traditional do،ent automation is fact-intensive, making predetermined logic extremely difficult. But you can predetermine the instructions you would give a smart human: “Here are examples from the past. Here are the new facts.”
PatternBuilder MAX, the first of NetDo،ents’ suite of ndMAX tools, lets you do “this” to “that” in every area of law.
Getting S،ed with AI for Law Firms
Visit www.netdo،ents.com to learn more about ndMAX and PatternBuilder MAX – plus see nine studio apps (pre-built apps included with PatternBuilder MAX) by requesting a demo. Some of the world’s largest law firms are utilizing PatternBuilder MAX and seeing incredible results. PatternBuilder MAX is now available globally.
Last updated November 10th, 2023