Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly popular term. While virtually everyone knows the term ‘Chat GPT’, Thomson Reuters found that ‘hesitance’ is the dominant sentiment about AI at professional service firms. The majority of survey respondents said generative AI could be applied to their work, more than half of them said AI should be applied to their work, but only 12% of these professionals were actually using the technology. Why such a difference? Although the average user can make sense of AI tools fairly quickly (using large language models like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini is as easy as having a conversation), concerns over privacy, inaccuracy, and compliance typically require more thought.

Fortunately, these concerns around AI processes apply more to massive AI platforms like Gemini or ChatGPT than to the enterprise-grade tools offered to lawyers and other professionals today. AI tools for legal firms are built to maintain and secure confidential data from the start. AI document processing has been part of the legal world since 2012, when the judge in the landmark case of Da Silva Moore v. Publicis suggested “computer-assisted review appears to be better than the available alternatives, and thus should be used in appropriate cases.” Moreover, medical documents used by IMEs and medicolegal firms are protected by platforms that follow HIPPA compliance, and accuracy issues are avoided by keeping expert humans “in the loop” of the workflow — not so difficult in the expert driven personal injury space. 

Where can AI tools eliminate bottlenecks and repetitive processes within your personal injury firm?

With the ruling for Da Silva Moore in mind (computer review is easier and more accurate than manual workflows), where can your personal injury firm eliminate repetitive work? If some of these repetitive paperwork tasks are automated, what happens to your other workflows? Where is your firm bottlenecked? 

Personal injury firms in particular must handle a number of small, repetitive tasks. Personal injury lawyers, paralegals, and legal administrators handle the disbursements of funds, communicate and share relevant documents with medical experts, and track medical records and expenses. Small details such as these are often critical to the case, given that the  personal injury law teams need to collect and maintain detailed case files with payment receipts, medical histories, accident data, insurance company correspondence, and more. 

All of these small, repetitive tasks add up to much larger costs for the firm, the client, and the insurance company later on. The average workers’ compensation claim, for example, costs over $35,000 in California, due in part to the cost of medical experts. These expert evaluations use individual documents from medical visits. When duplicate documents are requested from multiple providers, the expert review can soon turn the case into a costly claim.

Eliminating even a portion of these repetitive tasks could save your paralegals and administrative staff from massive volumes of paperwork. Rather than replacing the roles of these professionals, using AI to do these jobs allows your team to make better use of your time. 

How and where can AI solutions be integrated into your personal injury firm’s workflows? 

Deciding how and where AI solutions can be integrated into your personal injury firm will depend on your organization’s needs. Does your firm need to eliminate:

• Repetitive tasks related to setting up a new client, collecting documents for the case, summarizing medical or legal documents, or storing these documents safely?
• Flagging components of the medical summary to lawyers, medical experts, or associate lawyers doing the case research? 
• Indexing case documents so they can be easily accessed and used by relevant team members?

Once you have decided on the most pressing needs of your personal injury firm – be it medical record processing or indexing documents related to a case – have team members (or partners) rank the relevant needs that they have right now, and discuss the possible costs of each solution. The product you choose should be secure, meet your needs for the specific use-case, and be cost-effective for your firm’s needs. 

Many AI tools offer training on the product and information related to security and compliance. With an increase in the market, many  AI tools also offer a period of free use to see how the product integrates with the needs of your team. If the AI product is missing features your team requires, it’s a good idea to communicate with the organization and see when or if  these features will be coming into development any time soon.

Choosing the right AI tools for your personal injury firm

The relationship between personal injury law and medical records, medical expenses, and medical claims means that volumes of paperwork are part of the job. Today’s AI tools make the process of reviewing and summarizing medical records much easier for personal injury lawyers. Without sacrificing the creativity and skill set that settles a great case, personal injury lawyers can free up their team to do higher value tasks: eliminating manual work, repetitive tasks, and the mountains of paperwork that make up medical summaries.