The Why of Legal AI

As with anything in innovation the user should be at the center of the universe. When developing AI solutions, it’s easy to fall into the black hole of gaming abstract metrics, whizz ahead into premature solutionising and forget about the focal point which is the user.

User Story

The Why of Legal AI helps to keep us in the orbit of the user by articulating why we are venturing on this voyage in the first place. One way this can be done is through a user story. A user story is a way of capturing how a solution can provide value to the user. It’s about using plain everyday language to capture, articulate and provide context on who the user is, what the user is trying to do and why.

A user story is made up of three parts:

1. Persona - The persona captures the role of the user, their general background and any additional information that might be useful in helping to relate and understand who the user is.
2. Need - What is the user actually trying to achieve? The need should be tech and solution agnostic. It should only speak about the problem they are trying to solve.
3. Goal - How does resolving their immediate need fit into the bigger picture? What’s the overall use case and the larger problem they are trying to solve?

The following is a template for a user story:

As a [persona], I want to [need], so that [goal]

Here’s an example of a user story:

As an M&A lawyer, I want to extract information from a collection of contracts so I know what risks they contain

Adding Context

The Why of Legal AI builds on a user story by providing additional context based on the legal use case and problem vertical. Within legal, there are different contexts and problem verticals:

1. Due Diligence
2. eDiscovery
3. Contract Review
4. Contract Repapering
5. Legal Research
6. Litigation

The template for the Why of Legal AI looks like this:

As a [persona] in a [context] context, I want to [need], so that [goal].

For the previous example, the Why of Legal AI would look like this:

As an M&A lawyer in a due diligence context, I want to extract information from a collection of contracts so I know what risks they contain.

The Why of Legal AI

The Why of Legal AI captures the wider use case and bigger picture within which AI should be used. Notice that this has nothing to do with technology or AI. The Why of Legal AI is just an exercise in carefully and precisely articulating who the user is, what they are trying to do, why they are trying to do it as well as the context they are trying to do it in.

Once The Why of Legal AI is ready, then the next step is to look at the How of Legal AI and the What of Legal AI.