AI Apps Help Improve Client Outcomes at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, a US law firm with a rich history spanning over 180 years, has made significant strides in integrating AI technologies into both its legal and administrative operations using a single tool. Under the leadership of Judi Flournoy, the firm's Chief Information Officer for more than a decade, Kelley Drye has continually explored innovative solutions to enhance their legal services across various practice areas, including litigation, international trade, corporate law, and others.

The firm’s Client Service and Innovation Committee created a task force to focus on generative AI, and their mandate was to look at all kinds of products and services that would be using generative AI to help lawyers serve their clients. This is Kelley Drye’s story of why they’re using the NetDocuments AI App Builder (powered by PatternBuilder MAX), their first use cases, benefits, and takeaways.  ‍

Finding Legal AI Solutions that Deliver Tangible Results

The firm’s criteria for selecting an AI solution were centered on reliability, ease of use, cost, and the tool’s ability to help improve client outcomes. After evaluating many technologies, the task force decided to take a couple of good use cases and build out AI applications leveraging the tools built into the NetDocuments platform.

Judi shared, “We chose NetDocuments as our enterprise content management system back in 2016 because it’s a true platform that can evolve with customers and the future of legal tech. The release of [AI App Builder] PatternBuilder MAX piqued my curiosity because we would be able to replicate the capabilities of multiple AI tools from within NetDocuments. We decided to go all in.”  

Having the AI toolset, an App Builder that comes with out of the box apps and the tools to fully customize them or build new automation solutions, as well as the firm’s content, all reside within the NetDocuments platform meant there were less information governance and privacy concerns with moving data outside the firm’s secure document management system. This is especially important for law firms and legal departments that are dealing with sensitive data and have stringent ethical requirements about keeping it secure. ‍

Getting Started with Two Use Cases That Save Time and Reduce Risk

With the help of NetDocuments and a leading implementation partner, 3545 Consulting, Kelley Drye started by building out two AI applications that both save time and reduce risk.

1. Lease Extraction App: This AI app automates the analysis of lease agreements based on a client’s playbook. The app enabled quick extraction of relevant data points from leases across all commercial properties, which were then compiled into a structured format for easy review and decision-making.

Explained Judi, “The AI app has been a game changer: wherein the example of a large company with multiple commercial properties declaring bankruptcy, all of those leases would have needed to be manually looked at against the client’s checklist playbook and answers translated and then added to an Excel spreadsheet. Now we can feed documents into the lease extraction app and the legal team has instantly useable results — all within NetDocuments.”  

This approach has taken a manual process that used to take a significant amount of time per lease and reduced it to a few clicks. Additionally, the playbook can be modified for each client to focus on their specific criteria. The data that is extracted from the leases can either be saved into a data table within NetDocuments for reuse in generating amendments to leases or renewals, or it can be stored as part of the document’s metadata profile for use in searching or filtering — both of which add additional value and consistency beyond the initial project of gathering the information from within each lease.

2. Outside Counsel Guidelines App: This AI app automatically reviews outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) from Kelley Drye’s clients to identify potential conflicts with the firm's policies and flag them for further review and/or negotiation.  

“Reviewing outside counsel guidelines can be time-consuming because they’ve become more prescriptive on what clients expect of their outside counsel and things they will and will not agree to,” shared Judi. “We learned from the lease extraction app the power of playbooks, so I worked with the firm’s general counsel, conflicts counsel, and directors of cybersecurity, information governance, and billing to define our OCG playbook. What were the things the firm would and would not agree to? 3545 Consulting used that to build out a new AI app that allows us to quickly flag anything in outside counsel guidelines that conflicts with our defined playbook.”

In addition to improving the firm’s ability and timeliness in responding to OCG submissions from new clients and getting work started more quickly, the OCG app in NetDocuments has also helped the firm establish an “exceptions” database that allows the firm’s general counsel and conflicts counsel see where things might need to be revisited.

Judi noted, “This AI app in NetDocuments is speeding the process, inviting more accuracy and dialogue into the process, reducing risk, and essentially helping the lawyer — the relationship partner — understand why we make the decisions we make around risk mitigation.”  

Realizing Multiple Benefits with a Single AI Solution

Starting off with these two fully customized AI apps sets up the firm to be able to build additional apps in the NetDocuments App Builder (powered by PatternBuilder MAX). These use cases can also be leveraged to demonstrate the potential and drive further AI usage across the firm. Kelley Drye also plans to leverage more of NetDocuments’ pre-built AI apps like the summarize app, as well the Legal AI Assistant, which enables their entire user base to ask questions of a single document or across entire sets of documents without ever opening them, all while respecting ethical walls and other security already in place within NetDocuments.

Explained Judi, “The introduction of the ‘ask AI’ Legal AI Assistant into the NetDocuments platform gives people the ability to navigate and understand content at a different level. They can ask a question of one or multiple documents and get reliable responses. And for administrative departments responsible for complex document reviews or billing, some of the administrative burden has been lifted and there’s a high level of confidence in the AI outputs we’ve built.”

The Legal AI Assistant delivers day one value across the board while apps are developed to meet more specific use cases and workflows.

Here are some additional benefits called out by Kelley Drye:

• ‍Reinvented Workflows: The AI-powered apps combined with automation allow processes to be kicked off automatically, data extracted and stored, emails sent, timekeepers flagged, and more. Workflows are becoming faster, more reliable and consistent, and more efficient.
• ‍Risk Reduction: Automated checks and balances within the OCG analysis app ensure that all client expectations are met without compromising the firm's standards or exposing it to unnecessary risks.
• ‍Transparency and Collaboration: With a broader understanding and more transparency around processes, Kelley Drye is avoiding siloed work, has more visibility into what’s being done, and can collaborate more quickly.
• ‍Improved Client Service: By automating routine, mundane tasks with AI, lawyers and staff can deliver more cost certainty and focus more on providing high-quality legal services, improving client satisfaction and outcomes.

Meaningful Results

Kelley Drye’s proactive approach to exploring and adopting AI to help improve client outcomes has led to leveraging tools like the NetDocuments AI App Builder (powered by PatternBuilder MAX) and Legal AI Assistant to save time, ensure consistent results, and reduce risk. And as efficiencies improve, lawyers have more time to devote to creative problem solving and critical thinking versus boring, mind-numbing tasks.  

By taking advantage of AI and automation within an intelligent document management system, the firm is setting itself up for future AI apps and capabilities for improved workflows all while providing their users and the firm’s clients with guardrails and the level of security they expect.  

Noted Judi, “When it comes to creating custom AI apps that deliver the exact information you need, it can be an iterative process to get to the right prompt and output. Be prepared to put in the hard work, but the results can be really meaningful. These apps have been terrific tools to add to our toolkit.”

One thing that has held some firms back with leveraging generative AI is fear of the unknown and not getting consistent responses. As Judi (and many others) pointed out, learning to prompt generative AI in order to get consistent outputs can be a challenge at first. Having a knowledgeable partner alongside can aid in expediting your journey and getting to ROI with your app building. 3545, along with numerous other NetDocuments partners, have been certified by NetDocuments in leveraging our AI App Builder and have created unique and valuable solutions for our joint customers, so don’t be afraid to bring in outside app builders to see even quicker ROI and help your internal builders get up to speed even faster.

To learn more about the tools that Kelley Drye is using, watch this demonstration of the AI App Builder and Legal AI Assistant in action, or for a personalized demonstration, complete this request form.

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