‘The Wild West:’ Personal injury attorneys navigate AI tools as adoption of the technology grows

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By Kallie Cox

As artificial intelligence models continue to develop at astonishing speed, more lawyers are adopting these tools for their practices. Personal injury is one practice area benefiting greatly from the technology.

While ethical concerns and fear of the unknown are holding some firms back from testing AI, others are cautiously optimistic and are experimenting with its possibilities.

Attorneys across the Carolinas say what they’re discovering is revolutionary and is distilling hours of work into mere minutes, especially when combing through medical documents, flagging conflicting testimony, or completing pre-litigation work.

A recent study by LawPro.ai on the future of legal tech found that more than half of personal injury firms nationwide have adopted AI.

Harold Staley, a partner with Elrod Pope in Rock Hill, said AI is going to revolutionize the practice of law.

Mark Joye, of the Joye Law Firm in Charleston, says AI development is the “Wild West,” but agrees the tech will revolutionize his personal injury practice.

Each of the attorneys Lawyers Weekly spoke with agrees that attorneys should be cautious as they experiment with AI and as regulations and ethics struggle to catch up to AI’s development.

The revolution

Two things have entirely changed the practice of law during Staley’s career. The first was online research and included Westlaw and LexisNexis. The second is artificial intelligence.

One area Staley is using AI for assistance with is the organization of his case materials. It’s something he has struggled with and says one of the most difficult parts of preparing any case is distilling and organizing hundreds of pages of information in a way that is easy to work with.

“I can drop in four, five, six, 10 depositions and other material from a case file into AI and ask it to generate an outline, or generate talking points, or generate good cross examination points,” Staley said. “In a matter of moments, I’m talking 30 seconds to a minute and a half, you’ve got this 20-page outline highlighting all the depositions — and I’m talking page and line numbers — and that is a huge, huge benefit.”

Of course, with any AI-generated material, attorneys still need to review and check anything it produces carefully, he added. Even with this review, the technology is a huge time saver.

“The application we’re using right now (…) it’s a platform for people in litigation dealing with voluminous medical evidence,” Staley said. “I can take a 10,000-page medical record (…) and I can type something in such as to show me the deviations of standard of care dealing with X.”

As an example, Staley said he had a recent case where a client was suffering from a botched catheter insertion, with a long history of medical professionals botching this insertion. He was able to use AI to comb through the medical evidence in the case and to highlight different dates, times and records where this occurred.

Joye agreed that legal AI tools have been particularly helpful for parsing through dense medical histories. He said his firm has also been successful using AI when crafting demand letters, summarizing accident reports and witness statements, and searching for prior sworn testimony of a witness over the course of several years.

“There are some programs that we’ve looked into that you can go into a deposition and AI will listen to a deponent testify about information, and it can be searching while you’re asking questions for statements that the witness may have made, that you might go back to and re-ask questions about some of the points as it instantaneously pulls in information,” Joye said.

While these applications of AI have been helpful so far, the technology is constantly in motion, making it overwhelming and difficult for attorneys to navigate, Joye said.

“There’s so much development coming out about artificial intelligence that it’s just a Wild West,” he said.

Joye added that ChatGPT’s advertising algorithm is based on user conversations, which worries him about the privacy and confidentiality of the platforms. That said, he sees it as just another issue to wade through on behalf of his firm.

“It’s exciting because I’ve been practicing this long, there’s always new changes in the law,” Joye said. “This is one of them. This is a big one, but right now there’s just, there’s a lot of stuff to have to go through.”

While AI is still a bit daunting, Joye said he is doing his best to ferret out how best to use the tech and is continuing to learn about it.

“That’s just part of being a lawyer in my profession. You cannot sit on your haunches and just rely upon what you used to do yesterday to get you forward till tomorrow,” he said. “If you’re not adapting to the times, you’re going to get bowled over.”

Liam Duffy, of Yarborough Applegate in Charleston, is a proponent of responsible AI use and frequently presents to other lawyers on AI-related topics. He said he uses large language models such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create personal assistants that help him in his practice.

“I have created dozens of task-based AI ‘assistants’ which are carefully trained on my own—and our firm’s—prior, curated, high-quality work product rather open-source type data,” Duffy said.

These assistants can help with repeatable tasks such as creating first drafts of discovery, deposition outlines, trial examinations, opening statements and pleadings. Duffy said they also help with marketing efforts and strategic planning.

“Our case management software, Filevine, has built-in AI tools which allow for the creation of detailed chronologies, ‘chatting’ or inquiring with each client’s file to quickly find needles in the haystack, and more,” Duffy said. “AI tools like this have enhanced efficiency and speed of access to information on the fly, which is a critical skill for trial lawyers.”

Jason McConnell, managing attorney of Mehta & McConnell in Charlotte, said his firm is using AI in its case management software, Needles by Assembly. He said the firm is currently experimenting, using AI to summarize medical records, generate file summaries, and perform similar tasks.

“We haven’t really gotten into generating settlement demands or any type of pleading or anything like that,” McConnell said. “A) I don’t think it’s advanced enough to do that and B), I don’t think we have learned enough about how to use it correctly to do something like that.”

In addition to this software, McConnell said the firm is shopping the market for platforms that specialize in drafting demand letters to insurance companies in auto accident cases and other personal injury cases. He noted that it’s important to be careful and double-check accuracy, particularly regarding medical summaries, which he found unreliable just a year ago.

“But the technology has advanced pretty significantly within the last year, to the point where I do feel confident, at least for my own personal uses, using an AI-generated medical summary to get me up to speed for a mediation or something of that nature,” McConnell said.

Because Mehta & McConnell is a small firm consisting of two lawyers and three paralegals, cost is one of the first considerations when evaluating new AI tools.

“Considering how many demand packages would we actually be generating with this software if we invested in it,” he said. “And does it increase efficiency to the point that it would make sense to invest in that and that it would, in fact, pay for itself by being able to do more or a higher volume of work than what we’re currently doing?”

McConnell has heard the horror stories of AI generating false citations in briefs, and it is something he is leery of. He said that he would not use AI for something he was submitting in court but is excited that the tool helps make him more efficient.

“The fact that it has shown some promise with the medical and file summaries and being able to ask questions to AI, say, in the midst of a mediation,” McConnell said. “And frankly, I just feel like that’s where the practice is moving.”

He believes that within the next two to three years, attorneys who are not using AI are going to be behind the curve like those who failed to adopt websites when the internet was developed.

Should AI continue to improve, McConnell’s dream product would be one that could eventually handle intake for new clients and help obtain up-to-date medical records, which he said is often challenging, even with a client’s permission.

“So, I think those two areas would benefit us greatly if they can get to the point where the technology can cover those two areas within the next five to 10 years,” he said.

Use caution

Caution is a must when it comes to using AI, but what this looks like can differ from attorney to attorney. Lawyers must find their own system that allows them to conduct themselves in a way that protects their license, Staley said.

“I’ve just now started to get comfortable using (AI) in the last year, but I would tell everyone I think it’s a tremendous resource,” Staley said. “I don’t know that you can just ignore it if you’re not utilizing it. I think over the long run, it’s probably detrimental to your practice.”

Something else attorneys should be aware of, whether they use AI or not, is that their clients are likely using it.

Staley said he recently read about an attorney whose client used AI to evaluate their case before coming to the lawyer for guidance. The analysis was wholly inaccurate and led the client to believe falsities about their case, including an incorrect interpretation of North Carolina dram shop law.

“So that kind of stuff happens all the time,” Staley said. “When people are Googling, most Google searches now offer this AI generated response and they’re just wrong a lot. And so that highlights how wonderful a resource it can be, but also how dangerous it can be if you’re not checking to make sure what it’s telling you is correct.”

A barrier to lawyers’ access to the tech is cost, Staley said. While free or low-cost platforms like ChatGPT exist, they are often inaccurate and don’t provide the guaranteed confidentiality attorneys require. But the legal software that is developed around privacy and client confidentiality is much too expensive for many small personal injury firms to obtain. As the tech continues to advance, he hopes it will become more affordable so everyone can reap the benefits.

“The advances that are taking place right now are pretty amazing, and I can only imagine in 10 years what it’s going to look like,” Staley said.

McConnell’s advice for attorneys? Do your due diligence and don’t be complacent. He noted an aversion—particularly among older attorneys—to learning new technologies that they believe will not impact their practice.

“But the reality is, it probably will impact your practice a lot more than you realize,” McConnell said. “I’m trying to learn it because I don’t want to fall, fall behind.”