In plaintiff’s personal injury law, time is the enemy. The quicker you can get your best “A” cases to trial, the sooner there will be a resolution…and you will get paid. So, what is the most common obstacle that causes delays in your cases? Creating and serving discovery responses.
Why is this a problem? Your paralegal is swamped with work. Even working overtime on weekends, your paralegal can’t keep up with the never-ending flow of discovery demands from an army of defense firms. What happens? Deadlines for discovery are missed, court-ordered deadlines are extended, and your cases don’t get to trial when they should. There is a solution.
Say hello to “Eve”, the only artificial intelligence provider that was created just for plaintiff’s personal injury law firms. Over the course of 5 years, Eve created a platform that can generate discovery responses, summons, and complaints, and review and interpret medical records within minutes. The quality of the discovery responses will be better than anything that your current team is doing.
The Magic of Artificial Intelligence for Plaintiff’s Lawyers
This is how “Eve” works. You upload a discovery response, e.g., plaintiff’s verified bill of particulars, to Eve’s “Blueprint” and you provide specific directions that you want Eve to follow in Eve’s “Central Library”. Eve will create a verified bill of particulars, and you will make revisions. With every iteration, the verified bill of particulars will improve, and Eve learns how you like to create discovery documents. The magic is just beginning.
For verified bills of particulars, you upload a template to Eve’s Blueprint for each of your firm’s practice areas, such as:
- Delay in the diagnosis of cancer
- Birth injury
- Delay in the diagnosis of a heart attack
- Delay in the diagnosis of stroke
- Nursing home negligence
- Motor vehicle wreck
- Premises liability
Eve will learn how to format discovery responses and learn the substance of your responses for each type of discovery issue. Next, you integrate Eve with your firm’s case management software (we love SmartAdvocate!) and with a little training, Eve will create a complete set of discovery responses, verified bill of particulars, and combined discovery demands within minutes that are tailored for the specific type of case. There’s no more excuse for missing discovery deadlines, and you just saved a boatload of work for your paralegals.
How to Leverage Artificial Intelligence for Everything You Do
And you’re just getting started. Next, you upload a template into Eve’s Blueprint for a summons and verified complaint for each practice area. Eve will create pleadings for filing that are near perfect (review and approval are always necessary), and you can file 5 new lawsuits within minutes. You will be blown away by the quality of Eve’s work.
Next, you can upload a template for court approval of a wrongful death settlement and an infant compromise settlement to Eve’s “Blueprint”. Eve will create the Order to Show Cause, attorney’s affirmation, plaintiff’s affidavit, and the Order approving the settlement, and in wrongful death cases, the probate petition for the distribution and allocation of the plaintiff’s net settlement proceeds. You just replaced the legal work that your paralegals are doing, and document creation by Eve is a heck of a lot faster.
Let’s say you need to analyze 2,000 pages of medical records by tomorrow. Upload the medical records to Eve and pose specific questions to Eve. You set the agenda for what you want Eve to do:
“In this potential medical malpractice case, the patient is claiming that the primary care physician failed to order any testing for rectal bleeding over 2 years before a diagnosis of rectal cancer.”
“Identify every occasion that rectal bleeding is documented in the medical records, and when there is such documentation, specify the duration of the delay in diagnosis of rectal cancer. If the patient had any other urological complaints that are documented in the medical records before the diagnosis of rectal cancer, identify the complaints and how long they occurred before the diagnosis.”
“Provide links to the specific parts of the medical records that contain references to rectal bleeding and/or urological symptoms before the diagnosis of rectal bleeding.”
Within minutes, Eve will analyze the records, provide a response with links to the cited portions of the medical records, and you will have an analysis of the medical records that would otherwise take 3-5 hours to review. This is how you leverage artificial intelligence.
You might be thinking, “Is Eve really this good?” The quality of Eve’s work, once you upload your templates, give instructions to Eve in the “Central Library,” and integrate your case management software with Eve, is stunning.
The Best Way to Avoid Case Hallucinations
Fabricated case citations generated by artificial intelligence are a major issue. There are safeguards and protocols that you should use to avoid case hallucinations.
First, a MAJOR WARNING: Do not rely upon ChatGPT for case citations or creating motion papers. ChatGPT uses information from the internet that may be inaccurate and cites cases and legal principles that may not exist. If you are using ChatGPT for motion papers, you do so at your own peril. LexisNexis has an artificial intelligence component named “Protege” that can create motion papers that are based only upon its own database. Because the case citations and legal principles are derived only from LexisNexis’s database and not from the internet, the risk of a case hallucination is substantially reduced (we have yet to find a case hallucination using LexisNexis).
Next, you should create a firmwide protocol for checking case citations and legal principles generated by artificial intelligence. For every case cited in a legal document, your paralegal should attach a copy of the cited case for review by your paralegal and an attorney. Additionally, we attach copies of the cited cases when we electronically file the documents with the court. Both the paralegal and the attorney should verify that the case citation and the legal principles for which it has been cited are accurate. If you do not do this, you are playing a dangerous game with artificial intelligence.
The Best Way to Leverage ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the most powerful AI platform, and for $19/month, it’s crazy not to use this powerful resource. Keep in mind that artificial intelligence is only as good as the information that you give it. Upload a pdf of an intake summary to ChatGPT and ask it to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the case. You can upload memoranda of expert opinions and ask ChatGPT (which our firm calls “Marvin”) to create questions for the defendants’ depositions.
You can upload a draft of your opening or closing statements for a trial and ask ChatGPT to provide powerful phrases. You can ask ChatGPT to create questions for the direct examination of an expert witness. You can upload a pdf of the user manual for your case management software and ask ChatGPT to answer questions based on the user manual. ChatGPT never forgets and will improve every time you use it.
One Suggestion for Implementing Artificial Intelligence
Don’t do this alone. Our firm uses a technology guru solely for the purpose of implementing Eve. We speak just about every day with our tech expert to make sure he understands the nuances of medical malpractice and injury law, and he uploads templates into Eve’s “Blueprint” and instructions into Eve’s “Central Library”. With every iteration of work product generated by Eve, the quality of work product improves, and the efficiency of our firm skyrockets.
Just one caveat: don’t expect perfection. Humans aren’t perfect, and neither is artificial intelligence, but in little time, you will see a work product that is 95% complete and done almost exactly the way you want it. Still have doubts? Try this one time, and your doubts will vanish. The next step is up to you.
Just FYI, our contact at Eve is Arben Zoto (Arben.Zoto@Eve.Legal), who will be happy to speak with you if you want to learn more about Eve. We do not benefit in any way from recommending Eve.
BTW, as a small token of appreciation for reading this article, we created a video that shows you exactly how we use Eve to create discovery responses. If you’d like to see the video, send an email with the subject line, “Show Me Eve”, to jfisher@fishermalpracticelaw.com.
