Litigation Associate
Research legal issues and draft memoranda
What You Do Today
Search Westlaw/Lexis for relevant case law, analyze holdings, synthesize authority into persuasive legal memos that frame the winning argument
AI That Applies
AI legal research tools find cases, analyze holdings, and draft research memos — reducing the initial research phase from hours to minutes
Technologies
How It Works
The system ingests hours to minutes as its primary data source. NLP models process the text input by identifying entities, classifying intent, and extracting the structured information needed for downstream decisions. The output is a first draft that captures the essential structure and content, ready for human editing and refinement.
What Changes
Research starts with AI-generated case summaries and analysis; you refine, verify, and craft the argument rather than starting from a blank search
What Stays
Legal analysis — identifying the winning theory, distinguishing bad cases, and crafting persuasive arguments — is core lawyering
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 legal issues and draft memoranda, understand your current state.
Without a baseline, you can't measure whether AI actually improved anything. You'll adopt tools without knowing if they're working.
Define Your Measures
What to track and how to calculate it
Time per cycle
How to calculate
Measure how long research legal issues and draft memoranda takes end-to-end today, then after AI adoption.
Why it matters
The most visible improvement is speed. If AI doesn't save time, question whether it's adding value.
Quality of output
How to calculate
Track error rates, rework frequency, or stakeholder satisfaction scores before and after.
Why it matters
Speed without quality is just faster mistakes. Measure both.
Start These Conversations
Who to talk to and what to ask
your general counsel or managing partner
“What content do we produce the most of that follows a repeatable structure?”
They set the firm's AI adoption posture
your legal technology manager
“What's our current review and approval process, and would AI-generated first drafts change the bottleneck?”
They manage the tools and can show you capabilities you don't know exist
Check Your Prerequisites
Confirm readiness before you invest
Check items as you confirm them.