*There are many topics to be discussed at the interface between artificial intelligence and law. To discuss these, the IA Law and Business Congress was organized by Lefebvre and held at the Banco Santander headquarters in Madrid (Luca de Tena). During a day of presentations and round tables, topics such as the role of lawyers in the face of this technology and the transformation of the administration of justice and AI governance were discussed.
José Ángel Sandín, CEO of Lefebvre, made this clear in his introduction: "Perhaps one of the sectors most affected by AI is the legal sector." The use of AI in legal departments and law firms has increased rapidly in recent months, as was noted on stage at the event. And soon the conferences began.
There was talk about digital transformation in the administration of justice, focusing on recent advances in artificial intelligence, the provision of AI-powered legal services, the importance of data protection in litigation and the key factors for proper governance in law firms.
One of the highlighted roundtable discussions at the event focused on the role of AI in legal practice. "This is just the beginning. But expectations need to be managed. AI is not for everything," said Alicia Muñoz Lombardía, Director of Governance, Regulation and Legal Services at Santander Spain's Commercial Banking.
The round table highlighted two aspects of artificial intelligence in the legal sector. On the one hand, the technology can help lawyers to speed up certain tasks. But it has also long been used to automate certain processes, e.g. for certain types of searches and data comparisons.
Rosario Baquero, Director of Legal Services for Finance, Administration and Control at Iberdrola and Director of the Iberdrola Legal Innovation Center (LINCE), explained the traditional way of introducing technology. The first step was to redesign the processes of legal departments and law firms. Then digitalization began, followed by the automation of tasks. Now comes the next step with generative artificial intelligence, which will have an even greater impact on the way lawyers work.
"We have to start from a conservative perspective, but even so, there are many cases where [artificial intelligence] can be useful," Baquero noted, adding the example of legal research being improved by the new technology. However, she emphasized that the needs of the company or law firm must first be determined before AI can be used in practical cases.
It was quickly concluded that human oversight must always be present. The lawyer sets the strategy, even if the technology supports the initial stages of the advisory work. "With these technologies, we are reinventing ourselves as lawyers," emphasized Noemí Brito, Partner for IT, IP and Legal Operations Transformation Services at KPMG Abogados. She explained how lawyers are well positioned to take advantage of AI. She emphasized that this technology relies heavily on language, as evidenced by the dominance of large language models (LLMs), and language is precisely the tool of lawyers.
Therefore, Brito believes that lawyers will play a strategic role in companies. They will be involved in AI governance processes and data usage, and their involvement will become increasingly necessary when decisions need to be made about the use of artificial intelligence tools.
The challenges posed by AI
When asked by the moderator, all three roundtable participants agreed on the importance of monitoring AI models. Bias is one of the biggest concerns. Alicia Muñoz from Santander summarized it this way: "We need to pay a lot of attention to the transparency of the models and the traceability of the data. We need to monitor the models and prevent them from deteriorating."
For Rosario Baquero from Iberdrola, it must be ensured that the AI results are explainable and that data protection is always maintained. To achieve this, the GDPR must already be applied in the design phase of solutions. Noemí Brito from KPMG also emphasized this, stating that compliance with the AI regulation has already begun. Although it is not yet in force, companies are already taking it into account to define their processes related to this technology. "We need to start working and adapting our processes to the regulation," she advised.
Baquero clarified: "We have been using AI for years, and when the regulation was just a proposal, we worked to adapt. But we operate in international companies and need to align our processes in the different jurisdictions and legislations in which we operate," she concluded. This means that it will be more complex than introducing a global methodology, but adapting it to the different regional specificities.