Generative AI (GenAI) is no longer a futuristic concept but a present-day reality, fundamentally changing how legal professionals approach complex disputes. Law firms are rapidly adopting this technology, driven by client expectations to reduce costs, accelerate insights, and enhance strategic decision-making. Across the lifecycle of a case, from initial strategy to the final verdict, these powerful new tools are reshaping workflows for high-stakes litigation, sensitive internal investigations, and other types of disputes.
While powerful, these tools are not perfect, and they do not replace the need for a “human in the loop” to ensure accurate and responsible legal advice. As Freshfields partners Tim Harkness, Rob McCallum, and Eric Bruce recently explained in a New York Law Journal article, their effective and responsible use requires careful attention to the human-directed workflows can maximize technology benefits while ensuring compliance with applicable legal and ethical rules, safeguarding client confidentiality, and verifying that output is accurate, reliable, and free of "hallucinations."
In this first of several posts on the way that GenAI tools are already transforming the legal industry, we highlight three key ways that AI is changing the way that law firms provide support on litigation and investigations work.
1. Accelerating Early Case Assessment
At the outset of a matter, the first step is often to synthesize the facts and develop insights as quickly as possible. GenAI tools can help legal teams move from initial facts to a cohesive strategy more efficiently. For example, GenAI tools can be used to generate a detailed chronology from a lengthy complaint or thousands of pages of client documents, highlighting critical events and identifying gaps in the factual record that require immediate attention. And for investigations, the same technology can assist in creating a detailed investigation plan, developing outlines for witness interviews, and identifying issues for communication to key stakeholders. By assisting with this preliminary drafting and analysis, GenAI tools can empower lawyers to spend more of their time on high-level strategy and early case assessment.
2. Transforming Document Review and Analysis
The discovery phase of litigation and the evidence-gathering stage of an investigation are notoriously labor-intensive. But GenAI tools are transforming these processes as well. Instead of relying on complex Boolean searches, lawyers can instead ask natural language questions to interrogate vast data sets, such as, "identify all communications where employee X discussed Project Y with a competitor," and receive results in moments, with citations to the record. And GenAI tools can now be used to conduct first pass reviews coding for relevance, privilege, and key issues, including secure, tailor-made models based on a client’s compliance suite, past investigation reports, and similar unique inputs. These processes not only save time but they can also provide a higher degree of coding consistency than a large team of multiple human reviewers might. In both the litigation and investigation context, these efficiencies can free up the legal team to focus on interpreting the evidence and building a compelling narrative.
3. Augmenting the Team at Trial and in Critical Presentations
In the final stages of a matter, GenAI tools can serve as a powerful real-time assistant. During trial, GenAI tools can review live testimony transcripts and instantly compare them against deposition transcripts and trial exhibits, allowing litigators to identify prior inconsistent statements for cross-examination on the spot. Litigators can also use GenAI to prepare for oral argument by uploading briefs and evidence to identify potential weaknesses, refine their arguments, and even use GenAI tools as a “sparring partner” to simulate how a judge might react to specific points. In investigations, as teams prepare for critical presentations, GenAI can help anticipate questions and instantly retrieve supporting evidence from the document set, ensuring the team is ready for any challenge. This real-time analytical support helps legal teams to be more agile and responsive when it matters most, from briefing government officials to arguing motions before federal judges.
The Path Forward
GenAI is becoming transformational at every stage of the litigation and investigation lifecycle. It is a "force multiplier" that allows legal teams to act with greater speed and precision. However, the true value of this technology is unlocked not by replacing the lawyer, but by augmenting their expertise. To put it another way, “it’s all about the workflow.” The strategic inclusion of GenAI tools into organizational workflows—pairing powerful technologies with human experience to ensure accuracy, protect confidentiality, and exercise professional judgment—is what will help define the next generation of excellence in client service. At Freshfields, we are pioneering efforts to adopt, customize, and deploy tailor-made GenAI tools for our investigation and litigation matters. To learn more, click here and stay tuned for future posts.
