AI in eDiscovery: Practical Use Cases
If there was one trending topic at Legalweek 2025, it was artificial intelligence. Sessions discussed using generative AI for legal review, AI’s impact on cybersecurity, ethical obligations surrounding AI, and the risks of the technology.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is everywhere – including the eDiscovery industry. AI is a general term covering tools and programs designed to perform complex tasks like decision-making, creating content, and reasoning. Legal teams can implement AI tools to assist with digging through mountains of emails, documents, and data to find the evidence to make or break a case. AI in eDiscovery promises smarter searches, automated prioritization and tagging, and improved insights and trends – but not without risks.
What AI Brings to eDiscovery
eDiscovery can feel like a giant haystack, and you’re looking for a handful of critical needles. Searching through electronic information with basic search keywords or dates is less time-consuming than combing through boxes of physical papers and documents – but it’s still a manual process.
AI tools in eDiscovery can act as a super-smart assistant that doesn’t just search—it understands. It can spot patterns, prioritize key documents, understand context and tone, and even uncover hidden connections between emails and files that humans might miss. You can think of AI as a GPS for a case: It’s not a self-driving car, but it’ll show you the fastest route to where you need to be.
Practical Uses for AI in eDiscovery
New AI-based tools and programs can impact every step of eDiscovery. Popular eDiscovery software and programs are incorporating optional AI tools for organizing data, finding relevant information, and connecting it all together.
Smarter Searches
AI can search for information based on more than just keywords – it can identify concepts, meaning, and tone. Add the ability to create complex search queries, and you can quickly find “urgent-sounding emails about project X.”
Prioritizing the Pile
AI tools can organize priorities. Rather than trying to review a million documents, AI can pull the most relevant 5,000 documents to the top of the pile. Prioritizing can save countless hours of the eDiscovery process.
Early Insights
By analyzing the strength of a case and predicting potential outcomes, AI can help legal teams decide whether to settle or fight, potentially saving months of time and millions of dollars. Teams can prepare for possible outcomes and adjust their position and arguments to improve their chances.
Sorting the Mess
AI can automatically tag and classify data, pull text from scanned documents and images, convert audio and video records to searchable text, and mark duplicates. It can even identify potentially sensitive information like privileged content or personal data and automatically redact data so teams remain in compliance with data privacy.
Connecting the Dots
AI can link a casual text or chat message to a formal contract, revealing insights that might otherwise stay buried. AI might lead to that lightbulb or breakthrough moment quicker than its human counterpart.
Humans + AI
AI isn’t trying to replace humans; it’s aiming to be another tool to use. The impact of AI in eDiscovery hinges on the ability to keep it simple, ensure security, and keep humans in charge.
Keeping AI Simple
Legal teams need to be able to explain AI’s role in any case in simple terms. “The AI flagged these 50 emails because they’re about ‘Project X’ and include an urgent tone” instills more confidence and a vague “The algorithm prioritized them.” Vendors designing AI tools with clear outputs that don’t require a background in tech to understand and the widespread adoption and increased general understanding of AI make it easier to explain in a courtroom.
Security Matters
Legal data is sensitive, there’s confidential information, private personal details, and potential health records. Where does AI fit in “attorney-client privilege”? AI tools used for eDiscovery need to be secure. Tools can run behind a firm’s firewall or use models built to ensure legal privacy with data encryption. Generic AI tools often use user input to train the AI – sending anything case-related to these poses a huge security and compliance risk.
Humans Stay in Charge
Facts are the key to any legal case. AI is not 100% accurate, 100% of the time. AI is still learning, and like humans, it can make mistakes and even have some level of bias. The stakes in eDiscovery are too high to have reliance on any AI tool. While it can shrink the haystack, humans still need to find the needles. AI tools are just another member of the team, and the work needs to be cross-checked and verified by humans.
Where AI Shouldn’t Go (Yet)
AI isn’t perfect, and it’s not the answer to all situations. AI in eDiscovery has limitations.
Mystery Results
If an AI tool can’t explain why it flagged something and humans can’t verify it, that becomes a liability. Explaining AI to courts keeps getting easier, but “trust the AI,” is not enough. AI-related evidence can become inadmissible and impact an entire case.
Cutting Corners
AI can’t have too much control. It can flag items as potentially irrelevant or mark content as possibly privileged but shouldn’t automatically hide items. Let the humans confirm before tossing items aside, and don’t risk missing crucial evidence due to an AI misstep.
Fact-Checking Fumbles
AI learns from scouring content on the internet, and it hasn’t quite gotten the hang of verifying it’s research. AI programs have been known to spit out incorrect information and can struggle to do math. There’s a reason most generic AI programs include a disclaimer that they can “make mistakes, always verify output,” right on the chat feature. Don’t lean on AI tools for working with hard data and numbers, especially without a human to double-check.
Will It Stick? A Cautious Yes
AI has a real shot at transforming eDiscovery, working as a tool or assistant and not as an ultimate solution. It’s not going to do all the work in place of a review team, but it has the potential to speed up searches, spotlight key documents, and allow legal teams to focus on the important pieces.
AI tools are getting easier to use and harder to avoid. They’re integrated into new devices and included as optional features on new software. The increase in the general public’s familiarity with AI tools makes them easier to explain to clients and courts. AI in eDiscovery requires humans to remain in control, and security is a non-negotiable.
The Bottom Line
AI in eDiscovery is marking a new era of legal tech. Widespread adoption of AI makes it more easily explainable in a courtroom. Human-led, AI-assisted search and review reduces risks of AI errors and security concerns. AI may avoid being another fad in eDiscovery. It won’t replace human reviewers or decide the verdict on cases, but it can make the process faster and less overwhelming. The legal industry can balance innovation with accountability and embrace AI as a tool. Embracing the future of eDiscovery and the use of AI means understanding the risks and the capabilities.
