Legal Services · Litigation & Dispute Resolution
Research case law and draft legal memoranda
Trajectories describe the observable direction of human effort — not a prediction about specific roles, headcount, or individual careers.
What You Do Today
Associates spend hours searching Westlaw/Lexis for relevant cases, analyzing holdings, and drafting memos that synthesize legal authority into persuasive arguments.
AI Technologies
Roles Involved
How It Works
AI legal research tools find relevant cases, analyze holdings, identify distinguishing factors, and draft research memos — reducing hours of manual research to minutes.
What Changes
Research that took 10 hours takes 2; AI surfaces relevant cases across jurisdictions and identifies the strongest authorities for your position.
What Stays the Same
Legal analysis — crafting the argument, identifying the winning theory, and making the judgment calls about which authorities to cite and how to frame them.
Cross-Industry Concepts
Evidence & Sources
- •Harvey AI
- •CoCounsel (Thomson Reuters)
- •Casetext
Sources listed are directional references, not formal citations. Verify against primary sources before using in business cases or presentations.
Last reviewed: March 2026
What To Do Next
This section won't tell you what your numbers should be. It will show you how to find them yourself. Every instruction below produces a real, verifiable result in your organization. No benchmarks, no projections — just the steps to build your own evidence.
Establish Your Baseline
Know where you are before you move
Before adopting AI tools for research case law and draft legal memoranda, document your current state in litigation & dispute resolution.
Without a baseline, you can't tell whether AI actually improved research case law and draft legal memoranda or just changed who does it.
Define Your Measures
What to track and how to calculate it
matter cycle time
How to calculate
Measure matter cycle time for research case law and draft legal memoranda before and after AI adoption. Pull from your matter management system.
Why it matters
This is the most direct indicator of whether AI is adding value to litigation & dispute resolution.
outside counsel spend
How to calculate
Track outside counsel spend using the same methodology you use today. Don't change how you measure just because you changed how you work.
Why it matters
Speed without quality is just faster mistakes. Measure both together.
Start These Conversations
Who to talk to and what to ask
General Counsel or Managing Partner
“What's our plan for AI in litigation & dispute resolution? Are we piloting, planning, or waiting?”
This tells you whether to experiment quietly or push for formal investment in research case law and draft legal memoranda.
your matter management system administrator or vendor
“What AI capabilities exist in our current matter management system that we're not using? Most platforms are adding AI features faster than teams adopt them.”
The cheapest AI adoption is the features already included in your existing license.
a practitioner in litigation & dispute resolution at another organization
“Have you deployed AI for research case law and draft legal memoranda? What worked, what didn't, and what would you do differently?”
Peer experience is more useful than vendor demos. Find someone who has actually done this.
Check Your Prerequisites
Confirm readiness before you invest
Check items as you confirm them.
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Technology That Enables This
These architecture components support or enable this AI application.