“When I started out in law, at Mannheimer Swartling, one of the biggest firms in the Nordics, I often faced tasks that bordered on the impossible,” Emma recalls. In one of many stories Emma could tell, she was tasked with summarising a target company's license periods for a meeting the next morning. Which she quickly realised would be a problem.

“I had 60 plus contracts to go through, all with very complex license periods. There just wasn’t enough time to meet the deadline, even if I stayed up all night. I remember wondering if it was a test to see what I would do with an impossible task – and that motivated me.”

Emma scoped the exercise in a way that made most sense with the hours she had and spent the whole night working to deliver something meaningful in time. “Of course, if I’d had the tools we have at Legora today,  it would’ve been a completely different story. I’d have been done in a couple of hours.”

Curiosity to reality

The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 was a turning point for Emma, becoming clear that this technology had an inescapable power to completely revolutionise legal work. “I knew then that I wanted to be a part of developing this technology and making sure that it becomes truly useful. I spent a lot of time trying to learn the weaknesses and the strengths of generative AI, and understanding how I could use it best. When I then saw that Legora (called Leya at the time) had been admitted to the firm’s legal tech startup incubator, I was curious and excited. It was obvious that they were determined to leverage the technology for legal work. I found that fascinating.” she says. 

In perhaps a stroke of fate, the founders behind Legora began developing the platform in the office of the law firm that Emma worked for. She remembers, “It was unusual at that time to see young talented engineers trying to make life easier for lawyers. I saw them day-after-day asking question-after-question, and sharing what they were working on.”

Emma sought out the team in their windowless room, where she got the sense they were spending every waking hour. “There was a kind of magical atmosphere in there.” After talking with founder Max Junestrand at length about the possibilities for the future, Emma recalls making a bold move. “I said to reach out to me when it was time to build an in-house legal team.” And that’s exactly what they did. 

Undeniable value

Now as Legora’s head of legal, Emma uses AI daily. “For in-house legal teams, the value of AI is immediately clear. A bulk of the work revolves around recurring questions, whether that’s working on your own policies, your own contracts, or your regulatory framework – the same questions are surfaced again and again. By leveraging AI you can get instant answers, spot patterns and streamline decision making. It reduces so much time spent on repetitive tasks.”

When asked about the immediate wins teams can leverage AI for, Emma points to making existing legal infrastructure more accessible. “If you take the example of NDAs. We created an NDA review playbook within the Legora platform that, as a first step, allowed Legora’s legal team to automate and streamline our NDA review process in an incredibly robust way. The second step was empowering the organisation to handle these reviews themselves, which I would say has probably reduced the time spent on NDAs by about 90%, and that’s just one example.”  

For Emma’s day-to-day, streamlining repetitive work within the team has meant that she can focus on adding greater value to the business. “I can spend more time on human-centric things, like negotiation, which is such a crucial part of the role. I get to spend more time actually talking things through and clearing roadblocks,” says Emma. 

A virtual sparring partner

Despite the obvious benefits of incorporating AI into the legal day-to-day, Emma still finds reticence. “One lawyer told me that using AI feels like cheating, as if they ought to  be able to handle the task on their own. I found that funny. We all want to be great at what we do, but the truth is that AI, especially for the less glamorous tasks, can serve as a valuable sparring partner, offering insights and input that ultimately make your work better. It really comes down to the fact that you can only do so much with your time, so use it wisely.”

Another important factor that helps lawyers get the best out of AI is ensuring it is grounded with good data and sources. Emma adds, “The AI is not your brain and doesn't have access to everything that you know. It’s the same with a colleague. I like to think about properly grounding AI tasks in the same way that I would explain it to a colleague who would be working on it. We all know the end result is only as good as the brief. And if you need to tweak or iterate anything along the way, you can do that really fast with AI.”

The same role, just done differently

With the pace of AI development accelerating at lightning speed, Emma sees the next few years both changing exponentially and not at all. “So much has happened just in the past couple of years. I think that pace is going to continue. But it doesn't really change the role as a whole. The role stays the same. As an in-house lawyer or practicing lawyer, you're an adviser. You are responsible for the advice that you give and the risk assessments that you make. That will continue to be the case. The difference is the continuous shift away from doing manual verification work, to spending more time on the high-impact, value-adding tasks.” 

Emma concludes: “When using AI, I get to the conclusion faster, and having come to the conclusion faster, that gives me more time to actually find the arguments to convince others why that conclusion is right. So then I'm more prepared. I’m more prepared in meetings, in negotiations and in general. I can focus less on just reacting to issues as they arise and more on strategic work that helps prevent them from happening in the first place. And that, I believe, makes me a better lawyer.”