Legal · persona
Litigation Firm
Civil or commercial litigation, 5-100 attorneys. Discovery + motions + depositions + trial prep. Calendar-driven. Sanction-risk if a deadline slips.
A day in the life
What the next Tuesday looks like
A senior associate is staring at three discovery responses due Friday across two cases, while paralegals are assembling a privilege log from 14,000 emails on a third matter, while the partner is in mediation prep for tomorrow morning. The firm has 47 active matters; each one has 8-30 outstanding tasks; the litigation calendar has 12 deadlines this week.
Nothing gets dropped because everyone is good at their job. But the firm is paying senior associates to do paralegal work, paying paralegals to do legal-assistant work, and paying legal assistants to be calendar enforcement. The leverage ratio is upside-down.
The AI Operating Layer reorders the leverage. Discovery responses get drafted from production sets + interrogatory templates + matter facts; the associate edits in 30 minutes instead of starting from scratch. The privilege log gets generated by AI scanning the production set with the associate reviewing flagged calls, not all 14,000. The mediation prep memo gets drafted from the matter file's chronology, exposure analysis, and prior orders; the partner edits and adds judgment, doesn't assemble facts.
Deadlines never slip because the calendar drives daily reminders + escalations + automatic conflict checks against the team's other matters.
The litigation firm playbook
The automations that matter most
Out of the full Legal catalog, these are the ones a litigation firm should run first.
Conflicts check & matter intake
Intake & conflicts
New-matter intake form auto-runs a continuous conflicts check against the firm's matter inventory + adverse-party registry + lawyer disclosure files. Matters with potential conflicts route to the conflict-check committee with the supporting evidence pre-assembled.
Discovery response drafter
Discovery & document handling
Parses inbound interrogatories and document requests; cross-references the matter file (pleadings, productions, depositions); drafts response per request with objections from the firm's library; attaches Bates numbers; queues for associate review.
Document privilege review (AI-flagged, attorney-reviewed)
Discovery & document handling
Scans production sets for likely privileged communications; flags candidates for attorney review with the rationale (counsel-author, communication-with-counsel, work-product indicators). Attorney reviews flagged items, never the entire production.
Deposition prep packet
Discovery & document handling
Generates the deposition prep packet from the matter file: chronology, key documents, prior testimony, expected topics, suggested questions, hot documents, pre-assembled for the partner's review and editing.
Litigation calendar + deadline orchestrator
Calendar & deadline management
Court-rule-aware calendar that calculates deadlines from triggering events (complaint filed, motion served, etc.), distributes reminders to the responsible attorney on a calibrated cadence, and escalates overdue items.
In the wild
How this actually plays out
Discovery response drafting is one of the highest-leverage workflows in litigation.
The AI workflow: when interrogatories or document requests come in, the system parses each request, cross-references the matter file (pleadings, prior productions, deposition transcripts, key documents), drafts a response per request with appropriate objections from the firm's standard objection library, attaches relevant document Bates numbers, and queues the full response set for associate review. The associate edits, adds nuance, and signs off, typically 30-50% of the time vs starting from a blank page.
Nothing about the legal judgment changes. The associate still decides what to object to, what to produce, what to fight over. The first-draft mechanical assembly disappears.
A mid-size litigation firm with 12 active discovery-heavy matters typically recovers 200-400 associate hours/quarter on this single workflow.
Get the firm-shaped automation map
Tell us your firm size, primary practice areas, and the workflow that costs you the most attorney time. We'll come back with a written map of which 5-7 automations matter first, what privilege posture they require, and what the first 90 days would change.