Sifting Through Pitches: How Finnegan Evaluates AI Tools

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools are becoming more common in the workplace. To evaluate whether GenAI is a right fit, some law firms are creating strategies to determine its usage.

Finnegan partners and leaders of the firm’s AI committee Josh Goldberg and Beth Ferrill chatted with Managing IP about the firm’s efforts around GenAI.

Josh notes that if he gets a cold email about a product that’s in his wheelhouse, he’ll go to the business’s website and look around. If the product isn’t helpful for his practice but could be relevant to a colleague’s, he will forward the email to the right person. Then that employee could determine whether the tool is worth exploring.

Beth added that it’s helpful that many at Finnegan are either scientists or engineers.

“It’s in our wheelhouse to investigate these things. We have people that will spend some of their own time looking at this,” she said.

Both confirmed  that when evaluating a tool, the firm has to determine whether the proposed tool is safe to use from a security perspective. Josh said that the committee must evaluate potential security issues to ensure that the firm maintains its ISO 27001 certification status, an international standard for managing information security.

Additionally, they lean on Finnegan partner and leader of the firm’s privacy practice Lynn Parker Dupree to review technologies for privacy concerns.

Beth also noted that many AI tools are marketed to the legal industry in general, which can result in the tool not being a good fit based on the specific type of legal work the firm does. While one tool might be good for someone running an insurance company, it may not be well-suited for Finnegan. She said, “It’s important for anyone evaluating tools to think about the problem they’re trying to solve.”

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