Artificial intelligence in the legal profession is often discussed in terms of how many lawyers will be replaced by the technology. With the introduction of ROSS, the “world's first artificially intelligent attorney,” for instance, and AI contract review decreasing the need for outside counsel, the concern around what AI may mean for lawyers in the future is far from unwarranted.

But at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's (CLOC) annual institute in Las Vegas in May, instead of painting a dark picture of the future for lawyers due to the growth of these technologies, panelists at the “AI & Machine Learning: New Possibilities in Invoice Review, UTBMS Coding and Spend Analytics” session will focus on the current uses of AI to drive positive operational improvements in spend analytics and outside counsel management.

“A lot of the narratives [about AI] are around robot lawyers and displaced workers,” said Ian Nolan, chief executive officer of legal spend analytics platform Brightflag, who will be speaking at the session. “What we wanted was for this talk to be about the right now, what companies are doing right now. To take the conversation about that sensational narrative … and look at what is really possible with AI.”