Australian law firm Lander & Rogers finds legal uses for Copilot

Australian law firm Lander & Rogers has automated several legal tasks and launched an AI Lab, which will develop customised tools and integrate them into workflows and business processes.

Lander & Rogers' Melbourne Office
Credit: Lander & Rodgers.

Microsoft Copilot is assisting staff in contract drafting and review, data extraction and analysis, legal research and reasoning, and simpler tasks like composing emails or summarising meetings, a spokesperson told iTnews. 

“At present, there’s a core group piloting Copilot and in May to June we intend to roll it out more broadly across the firm," the spokesperson said.

“Initial uses include correspondence drafting; collaborating with Copilot, especially around its knowledge and ability in Power Platform; and recording, summarising and extracting action points from Teams meetings. 

“Early feedback is that Teams and Word are more intuitive and that the time saving is extremely helpful. Using Copilot for PowerPoint requires a bit more training.”

Generative AI as an email composition aid was one of the first applications of the technology that the law firm encouraged its 500 staff to use, the spokesperson said. 

“A law firm of Lander & Rogers' size generates thousands of emails daily and now Copilot can assist in extracting the main points of a document, highlighting them in the body of an email, and can generally assist with spelling, grammar and conciseness. 

“People in our business services group (non-lawyers) use Copilot for generating written and visual content for email newsletters and marketing materials.”

Lander & Rodgers had already conducted assessments of which legal tasks could be made more efficient through automation before deploying Copilot. 

In May last year, the firm’s innovation function iHub partnered with Monash University law lecturer Dr Jacqueline Weinberg and recruited five students to test use cases against various AI models during a five-month placement.  

Launches AI Lab

Last week Lander & Rodgers launched its AI Lab, headed by iHub, members of its technology group and “a selection of partners and lawyers who are actively engaging with AI.”

The first goal of the venture is to develop more specialised tools for assisting legal tasks. 

The spokesperson said that so far, “no current prototypes have been completed”, but the AI Lab is focusing on proofs-of-concept that can “serve as a bridge between theoretical AI capabilities and practical, usable tools in legal practice.

“Developing customised proofs-of-concept or prototypes is crucial in the legal field due to the complexity and variability of legal issues.”

The AI Lab also aims to integrate AI into both “operational frameworks” and “legal workflows to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and client satisfaction,” the spokesperson said.

“Operational frameworks cover existing business processes, decision-making structures, and technological infrastructures.

“We believe full integration is essential as we aim to focus on enhancing efficiency, accuracy, decision-making capabilities, and overall effectiveness of legal operations.”

The AI Lab will also be responsible for educating the firm’s staff about the limitations and ethical considerations of emerging technologies.

“We have a nine-point firmwide AI Policy that provides guidelines for the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence at Lander & Rogers. 

“Some of the key guidelines include assessing the purpose of AI use and if it is going to be used in a client matter, to discuss it with a supervisor first; to ensure that prompts are clear and unambiguous - to mitigate the risk of inaccurate output; to ensure that information in prompts is not confidential to a client or the firm and that no identifying data is included; and to make sure personal information that might identify an individual or client is not included in a prompt.

"Lander & Rogers operates under very strict privacy obligations.”