Lawyers Save Time Using AI to Research Court Decisions About Critical Topics Like Bankruptcy

In a Nutshell: The great thing about case law is it allows us to use past legal decisions to make inferences about future ones. But it can take a lot of time to search thousands of past cases for rulings that relate to your situation. Clearway Law offers an artificial intelligence product it calls Caseway to make searching through court records more efficient, saving time for lawyers and legal researchers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm in the 21st century. It has many supporters, but some people fear AI could devalue human interactivity and make it too convenient for us to live in isolation. Regardless of your opinion on AI, it’s not a technology that will likely fade into the background over the coming years like portable CD players and dial-up internet access have.

If you need some basic assistance while navigating a new website, an AI-powered chatbot can point you to where you need to go. And speaking of navigation, AI can give us driving directions that keep our road trips on schedule and less stressful.

But not everything is a good candidate for AI. If I were in need of life-saving surgery, I’d rather have top doctors and medical staff running the show, not a computer program. And if I needed some legal advice that could save me money, I’d rather talk to an experienced lawyer than blindly follow a strategy proposed by AI.

But at least part of my reluctance to rely on AI in certain situations owes to the fact that the technology is still relatively new. Clearway Law designs products for lawyers that are driven by AI. We spoke with Alistair Vigier, the company’s CEO and Founder, to learn how AI can help lawyers to streamline their workflows and serve clients more efficiently.

Vigier was in the military for seven years before starting his career. He told us he initially pursued becoming a lawyer before discovering a different career path. 

“I was shot while in the military, so they gave me a bunch of money and agreed to pay for my schooling,” Vigier told us. “I went to law school in the UK, but I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer because it’s pretty boring. I ended up getting a job at a law firm working on business development, and I grew their revenue significantly.”

Clearway Law is based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vigier told us it was while he was meeting with other legal technology companies in Canada that he realized that AI could help lawyers manage their firms and spend less time on tasks that can be automated.

We write about different types of businesses here at BadCredit.org. When we talk with business owners and entrepreneurs, we often hear about how they estimate the future value of different products and services they haven’t released to the public yet. But forecasting isn’t an exact science, and business owners can struggle to determine which product or service will earn them more revenue than others over time.

Clearway Law offers a client-screening tool that helps assess a client’s future value to a firm. Vigier told us the tool asks prospective clients why they’re seeking legal help and assigns them a grade based on their responses. Law firms can use that grade to estimate a client’s potential value to the firm’s bottom line.

“What the AI does in this instance is it helps determine how good a customer a client will be for a particular law firm,” Vigier told us. “And we’re looking to build out a feature that will let people make referrals within the tool. So, if you happened to reach out to a premium lawyer, but you should’ve probably contacted a junior lawyer, then the premium lawyer can refer your business and get compensated by a referral fee.”

Referral fees can be a significant source of revenue for a law firm. Vigier told us some law firms can charge referral fees of up to 15% of a case’s worth. And, more importantly, the firm that referred the business can use its bench of lawyers to work on more lucrative assignments that enhance the firm’s visibility.

Clearway Law has plans to help consumers who want to dispute information on their credit report. Vigier told us he’s found incorrect data on his credit report before, and he understands how frustrating it can be to get credit report errors corrected. He said that people who are armed with even a little knowledge about case law can often have success in getting banks and credit agencies to correct mistakes that can damage their credit.

Lawyers help us navigate the complexities of lawsuits and legal matters, but, just like any other business, they need to generate revenue to keep the lights on. Vigier told us that everyone wants the best lawyer, but most people don’t want to pay the fees that many top lawyers charge.

“One of the key things that our tools can do is filter out people who aren’t willing or able to pay their anticipated legal fees,” Vigier said. “Another thing it does is make sure people are contacting the right kind of firm for their needs. There’s so many different types of firms that not everyone understands which ones are going to be more equipped to help them with their specific case.”

If I were facing bankruptcy, it probably wouldn’t occur to me to turn to AI for legal help. But if a respected lawyer told me to use AI-enhanced services, that would go a long way toward giving me confidence that AI could help me find answers to legal questions 

Vigier is working on a new product, called Caseway, that he co-created with one of his business partners. He told us that Caseway is like ChatGPT, but for legal questions. While ChatGPT may pull its information from a wide variety of sources, Caseway only pulls in data from court decisions.

Caseway’s services are available to lawyers and paralegals, but Vigier told us it’s the company’s goal to soon provide assistance directly to the public. He said these tools may one day help people involved in custody disputes or financial issues that require the assistance of a legal professional.

“About 70% of people in Canada and 60% of people in the U.S. that are going through custody disputes or litigation are self-represented,” Vigier told us. “They’re in a really tough spot because they could hire a lawyer and pay tens of thousands of dollars, which they can’t afford, or they could basically just wing it by representing themselves. And you don’t want to wing it when you’re dealing with criminal matters, divorces, or bankruptcies.”

If a user asks Caseway a question that can’t be answered using information from decisions judges wrote, then it doesn’t try to create an answer. It simply informs the user that it couldn’t find an answer to their question.

“We’ve pulled in millions of court decisions from cases across Canada, and we’re probably going to do the same for California next,” Vigier told us. “It’s going to save the lawyers an insane amount of time in finding cases. It’s not something that will replace lawyers, but the quality of answers you can get from this will be very high because a judge’s answer to a legal question can be even more valuable than a lawyer’s.”

Although AI can help us answer questions, anyone who’s used it enough knows that sometimes it can produce head-scratching results. Vigier told us people can trust Caseway because it draws answers from a finite source of information. He said people will eventually be able to use the tool to fill out legal forms.

“We’re going to be able to take all the facts someone gives us and automatically compare it to what judges say is correct, and then it’ll automatically put it into a form for you,” Vigier told us. “Now, that isn’t to say that you should just go and file the information it gives you without reading it first. But the point is that you’ll basically be having a judge fill out the form for you in terms of the information we provide.”

Vigier has partnered with an individual with a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of British Columbia to develop AI solutions. He told us he plans to partner with two more PhD students in the near future to further strengthen Clearway Law’s offerings.

Clearway Law has been offering Caseway for free to allow the company to gather feedback and find any bugs with the tool. Vigier told us he expects the company to begin charging for the service soon. Depending on the market’s reaction, Caseway may become its own company rather than a solution under the Clearway Law umbrella.

Caseway provides users with sources of the information it provides, allowing them to dig deeper in instances they require more data about a particular court decision.  

“It’s a lot of work for us to find actual sources,” Vigier told us. “We have to go courthouse by courthouse. But we know the extra work we do is creating more value for our users.”