All In? Why IP Paralegals Must Embrace AI

Humanity’s success is a testament to our ability to adapt and innovate. Facing a problem or opportunity, we are equipped to analyse it based on our past individual and collective experiences and make conceptual leaps to solve or capitalise on it. We’re not unique in the animal kingdom in this capacity, but we are the best at it.

However, the emergence of artificial intelligence in a form that’s usable and largely understandable by the average human – AKA GenAI – has shaken our sense of superiority. We’re currently in an intense adjustment period, analysing what it means for us, what challenges it poses, and how we can capitalise on the AI revolution.

Across every industry, workers at all levels of seniority are questioning how AI will fit into their workflow.

There’s optimism: AI will eliminate mundane, low-level tasks and reduce the risk of errors. It will free time for more fulfilling tasks and make work more enjoyable.

There’s also pessimism: AI will replace human workers, and we’ll all be out of a job before we know it.

And, above all, there’s uncertainty, something most humans are programmed to find uncomfortable.

In our field of intellectual property management, paralegals and administrators are asking all these questions and more. As a group that is arguably more tech-savvy than many others in the legal sector, there is a sense of excitement about the use cases and applications of AI. But there is natural concern about the risks of AI, the risks of getting investment wrong, and the impact of its introduction on work security.

In this blog we will take a look at some of the opportunities, concerns, and approaches IP paralegals and administrators can take to develop a measured, yet positive, approach to AI in IP.

Why AI Will Disrupt the Legal Sector

Law is one of the most knowledge-intensive industries in existence. Information collection, retention, analysis, comparison, and reproduction to support an argument are core pillars of legal practice. Skilled attorneys are evaluated on their ability to take high volumes of complex data and frame it to argue a case effectively. AI is very good at managing information, spotting patterns, and – to some extent – drawing conclusions. (we’ll get into hallucination and inventions later).

Law is also highly process-based, particularly in the case of intellectual property law. Applying for protection, monitoring applications and responding to office actions, renewing protection – these are all based around forms and data – another area where AI, and its predecessor Robotic Process Automation, excel in. With the promise of agentic AI on the near horizon, where AI agents are empowered to not just analyse and recommend actions, but to actually take them on an organisation’s behalf, there is distinct potential for applying AI to manage IP protection.

Speed is one of AI’s superpowers; it can get through work in seconds or minutes that would take humans hours, days, or weeks. Accuracy, when managing purely data-driven tasks, is another.

But it isn’t perfect. Headlines ranging from embarrassing to potentially career-ending have swirled around those lawyers who have relied too heavily on AI-generated case law citations. GenAI, in particular, has a tendency to “fill in the gaps” when it doesn’t have a definitive answer. This is a serious problem in an industry where mistakes are not acceptable.

In an excellent article meditating on the possibility of AI “perfection”, Richard Tromans, founder of Artificial Lawyer, raises the point that: “A law firm is not just an economic pyramid of legal labour, it’s a pyramid of quality control” where work goes through a series of reviews from increasingly skilled stakeholders before it reaches clients, who also add their input. At the current stage, AI should perhaps be viewed as a junior associate – albeit one with a lot of confidence – whose work must be checked.

This raises another point that has been remarked on by several commentators: if a technology is fast but not accurate, any efficiency is lost when the work takes longer to check than the time saved in producing it. No IP administrator wants to spend time correcting the errors of a tech that’s supposed to make life easier!

The Age of Experts: IP Paralegals as the Human in the Loop

IP administrators and paralegals should position themselves as the expert “human-in-the-loop”. They’re equipped with the contextual knowledge and experience to quickly verify AI-supported work and devise new workflows and processes that leverage the power of AI, without falling prey to its vulnerabilities.

In this, paralegals and administrators have an advantage over many other legal sector stakeholders. They are typically tech-positive and have hands-on experience of managing technical solutions. This means that they are valuable assessors of proposed AI investments and can link productivity and efficiency enhancements to commercial benefits.

In doing so, they must consider the tech-specific considerations they need to take into account:

Data protection: client and company data must be rigorously protected from unauthorised access or exfiltration. This applies to AI as much as to any other technology. Firms must ensure they establish clear AI use policies and comply with data protection regulations and with emerging AI regulations.
Bias: AI that is trained on biased data will deliver biased outputs. This poses considerable ethical, operational and reputational problems if a firm’s practice acts in a biased way as a result of an AI-powered process. It is therefore important to assess data for bias before it is used in a live environment.
Compatibility: Law firms and in-house departments will already have a stack of legacy technology. Some of it may be incapable of integrating with AI solutions, meaning a wider technology refresh could be advisable so the business can take strategic advantage of AI.

There are also ethical and transparency issues to consider. While there are a vast number of applications firms could use AI for, they need to consider carefully which ones they should use it for. Transparency is a related issue; it is essential that clients know when and where AI will be used during their relationship with the firm.

Adoption Drivers: Clients and Competitors

Technology has not typically been a commercial battleground between rival law firms, but that’s changing fast. As legal teams face pressure to do more with fewer resources, technology will make the difference between those that can scale up and those that cannot. Contracts will be won or lost on the basis of technology competence.

This adds an urgency to developing a strategic roadmap for AI and the related legaltech ecosystem. IP paralegals and administrators, with their in-depth knowledge of the processes that form the engine of law firms and legal departments, must position themselves as experts shaping that roadmap.

By drawing on their innate expertise and proactively exploring what AI can deliver for the business, IP paralegals have an important window of opportunity to capitalise on this period of disruptive innovation.

Further reading:

One of the most important things for everyone involved in AI and IP is continuous learning. This is new ground, and there is a lot of discussion out there. Getting stuck into it is one way to build knowledge to apply in your organisation.

Here are some authors and groups to explore:

Colin S Levy: How AI Is Reshaping Legal Knowledge Structures and Market Dynamics – You can also follow Colin on X and at his website Colin S. Levy | Legal Technology Maven, Mentor, Speaker, Author