TLT has launched ‘AI Navigator’, an online questionnaire to help clients figure out what to do about GenAI and then how to do it. The UK law firm will leverage the responses to provide legal and consulting advice to inhouse teams, as well as other business units. Artificial Lawyer spoke to Gareth Oldale, a partner and head of TLT’s data privacy team, about the launch.
Central to the Navigator approach is to assess where companies are on the ‘AI maturity curve’ (see below), along with a ‘structured approach to understanding and leveraging AI from a best practice and legal perspective’. This connects to areas such as data control, ethics and fitting in with internal governance protocols, as well as – if the client wants it – helping with figuring out the best way to onboard genAI tools.
During the online assessment individuals are asked to rate the extent to which they agree/disagree with best practice statements. The results map against the level of maturity and produce a bespoke report with recommendations for how an organisation can boost its AI knowledge and/or implementation, the firm explained.
Now, you may say: ‘Hold on, how does TLT know so much about AI?’ Well, they’ve been working closely with legal tech companies for several years, including AI-driven contract management pioneer Legal Sifter, among others, (as well as doc automation business Clarilis), and they promote them to their clients. So, they’ve got to know a fair bit about how clients might want to leverage tech tools in the inhouse legal team and related issues.
Oldale told this site: ‘Clients in some cases do not understand AI or how to deploy it. They also really want to know how they benchmark against what they see in the market.’
‘The AI Navigator is a 15-minute questionnaire that gauges their level of investment and thinking around their ‘AI posture’,’ he added.
The report they then give to the clients uses analysis of the responses to the questions, plus some good old-fashioned legal and compliance perspectives from TLT’s lawyers.
Oldale noted that despite what one may assume, many corporates and banks were ‘watching and waiting’ and looking to see what their peers were doing first, before making a leap themselves into GenAI.
‘They are looking to see who is going through the learning curve,’ he said and added that ‘very often there is an internal mandate to embrace AI, but there is not a clear steer on how or what they (the inhouse team) should do.’
‘The challenge is that it’s unrealistic to think you can change the business from end to end with AI in one go. You cannot ‘eat the elephant’ in one bite,’ he noted.
While the main focus is inhouse, they’re also hoping to help commercial and HR teams with the same issues.
In a statement, Michelle Sally, a partner in TLT’s technology, IP and data team, added: ‘We believe [AI Navigator] will provide valuable support for any business that is using or is thinking of using AI technology, helping to mitigate risks, navigate the legislative and regulatory hurdles ahead and use it to their advantage.’
Overall, a smart move that should generate plenty of responses from the clients, who are still uncertain about what to do, and who it seems are being pulled in two directions at the same time:
- feeling pressure to adopt GenAI without knowing the how or why;
- and also seeing plenty of stories in the mainstream press about the dangers of AI and then not knowing how to handle those, or how real those scare stories actually are.
In short, well done to UK-based TLT for seizing the initiative and doing it with an easy-to-use questionnaire to get the ball rolling. Just shows, you don’t have to be a global law firm, or spend millions, to be a legal innovator!
—
And if you found this of interest, then check out the Legal Innovators UK conference in London, on November 6th and 7th.
We’re already looking ahead to the landmark legal innovation event, with Day One for law firms, and Day Two for inhouse and legal ops.
You can find more information here.
