The pace may be slow, the reservations significant – but there is certainly plenty of interest in the impact AI will have on contracts and contract management.
It is somewhat ironic that many lawyers are skeptical or even fearful of AI yet, as an industry, the Legal sector is forging ahead of most. Law firms fully appreciate the impact on their traditional offerings and ways of working.
While other industries are in most cases more hesitant, it doesn’t prevent curiosity. Indeed, forward thinking contracts and legal teams are keen to investigate and understand how AI might alter their role, in particular eliminating many repetitive tasks and contributing to increased value. Early use cases indicate that these hopes are being realized and I am looking forward to an up-coming webinar where Amgen explains their experience in deploying AI (visit here for details or to register).
For many, existing systems remain a limiting factor in the benefits they can achieve. Low adoption rates together with fragmented functionality make it difficult to access or generate the data on which AI flourishes. While fixing the problems is not easy, the pace of improvement has picked up and I am confident that the next 2 years will see a massive upsurge in the use of AI in the contracting process, with some exciting results spurring us on.