Litigation & Disputes

Litigation is the practice of resolving disputes through the courts — building a case, managing discovery, drafting motions and briefs, and arguing before a judge or jury. It is document-heavy and deadline-driven, combining painstaking analysis of evidence and precedent with strategy and advocacy. The analytical, document-intensive parts of litigation are exactly where AI now assists, even as the strategic and human-facing parts remain the lawyer's domain.

AI now reviews and summarizes case files, drafts first versions of motions and briefs, analyzes opposing arguments, and helps anticipate how a case might unfold based on similar precedent. It accelerates the heavy document work that fills a litigator's days while leaving strategy, judgment, and advocacy to the lawyer. The work shifts from drafting from scratch and reading every page toward directing AI through the analysis and refining what it produces.

Harvey and CoCounsel draft litigation documents, analyze case materials, and answer questions across the matter, while Westlaw Advantage and Lexis+ AI ground the legal research behind every argument. Relativity handles the discovery side — surfacing the relevant documents from millions in a case — and Legora gives litigation teams a shared AI workspace. The assistants Claude and ChatGPT help with drafting and analysis, with the same verification caveat that applies to all legal AI.

AI is compressing the document-heavy core of litigation — review, summarization, and first-draft briefing — which raises how much a small team can handle and pressures the leverage model built on armies of junior associates. The valued work shifts toward strategy, advocacy, judgment, and client relationships, none of which AI replaces. The accuracy stakes are at their highest in litigation: a fabricated citation or missed fact in a court filing has real consequences, and lawyers remain personally accountable to the court, so human review of every AI output is essential. The likely outcome is leaner teams doing more, with the lawyer's judgment more central, not less.