eDiscovery vendor DISCO has unveiled a chatbot that it says will help lawyers take advantage of the recent advances in large language models and generative AI.
The chatbot, called Cecilia, is expected to be commercially available in 2023 following a planned phased introduction to DISCO customers.
Cecilia is designed to allow lawyers to ask natural language questions and receive answers with specific citations to supporting evidence in large-scale, private DISCO eDiscovery databases. DISCO says that Cecilia is designed to cite evidence drawn from the user’s private documents in DISCO eDiscovery, which can contain millions or tens of millions of documents.
“Our firm has increasingly looked to integrate new technologies that can increase efficiencies and enhance the likelihood of success in legal matters,” said Anna Berman, a partner at Kutak Rock. “In today’s environment, customers expect efficiency and it has now become imperative for lawyers to advocate for strategies that foster innovation and unlock new value for clients. The idea of using DISCO’s generative AI tool as a way of responding to complex legal questions in plain English is very exciting, and we’re eager to test it out.”
Many traditional approaches to eDiscovery involve asking a question about the evidence, crafting searches to identify documents related to that question, reviewing the documents to find evidence, and then answering the question based on the evidence. For example, a lawyer investigating a surge in electricity prices might ask the question “how was energy company X involved in the rising prices?” and then craft searches to find documents and communications related to the relevant energy market issues. Then the lawyer reviews those documents and applies external knowledge to determine whether they constitute evidence of market manipulation, and forms a view of the answer to the question with citations to supporting evidence.
DISCO Cecilia is designed so that a lawyer can simply ask the ultimate question and get an AI-generated direct answer, with citations to supporting evidence, without the steps of crafting a search and reviewing documents. These answers could then be the starting point for further exploration and document review in DISCO Ediscovery or testimony review in DISCO Case Builder.
“As a law firm for some of the world’s most innovative companies, we are constantly looking for ways to leverage artificial intelligence in everything we do,” said Geoffrey Vance, a Perkins Coie partner and firmwide Chair of its E-Discovery Services & Strategy practice group. “The idea of using generative AI in all of my cases, combined with the news that DISCO has integrated generative AI into its e-discovery platform, is incredibly exciting. This could be game-changing technology with the potential to drastically improve the way we advocate for our clients.”
We will revisit the many GPT announcements at Legalweek shortly.