Generative AI is one of the first technology solutions professionals in Liberty Mutual’s legal department immediately expressed an interest in leveraging, said Tyson Roy, the insurance company’s director of legal innovation.
As a result, the insurer’s in-house legal team has been piloting some generative AI tools in hopes of enabling its legal professionals to deploy the technology.
The company is particularly interested in how the emerging artificial intelligence can help speed the review of complicated legal documents, according to Roy.
He said the Liberty Mutual legal team’s exploration of AI also benefited from sponsoring Suffolk University Law School’s Legal Design Challenge for law students held in late October.
The 2023 contest featured teams from institutions spread across the country trying to use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT to promote access to justice, and Roy served as one of the judges. The competition, put on by the Boston-based law school and insurance company, was conducted virtually.
Challenge winner
A combined team from the law schools at Brigham Young University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was awarded first place for their “Simple Asylum for Everyone” pitch.
Their tool uses generative AI to help pro-se litigants seeking asylum practice interviews they would need to undergo.
“A machine can't go take an asylum interview for an individual but it can help prepare them,” Roy said. “It can coach them up. It can help them understand what to expect.”
The “S.A.F.E.” technology solution also can help translate key immigration documents for asylum seekers into their native languages.
Roy said the judges appreciated that the BYU and UNLV team’s pitch recognized that asylum seekers would still need to take actions in addition to the tech’s output.
“What we loved about their solution was they walked that fine line of maximizing what GenAI is capable of, but also acknowledged the human in the loop is going to be the most important piece and is going to be doing the hardest work,” Roy said.
Leases
Another proposal that drew praise from the judges was Michigan State University College of Law’s “LeasesUnlocked” solution, which took third place.
The tool allows tenants and landlords to upload lease agreements, and the technology combs through them to answer questions.
Roy said the tool can answer queries such as whether a pet is allowed on the premises or what type of notice must be provided under different circumstances.
The solution also uses generative AI to provide information about state and federal tenant laws.
The leases-focused solution used emerging artificial intelligence in a manner similar to how the Liberty Mutual legal team is evaluating the technology, Roy said.
“I think where the real potential of GenAI lies in the in-house environment is just taking large amounts of information, large amounts of words, and being able to ask questions, being able to summarize, being able to search a database – fairly basic things that I think take us a lot of time in the current state,” he said.
Ongoing sponsorship
There are multiple reasons Liberty Mutual has been glad to sponsor the annual Legal Design Challenge, Roy said. They include that the company values partnering with an academic leader in the legal innovation space such as Suffolk University Law School.
Roy said the Liberty Mutual legal team also is a longstanding supporter of access to justice, including through team members’ pro bono work, so the contest’s focus on addressing the justice gap is welcomed.
Additionally, the company’s legal department consistently finds itself learning from the novel solutions the law students develop to address pressing challenges, Roy said.
“What amazes me about this program year after year is as the students come up with these ideas and pitch and present them, we're saying, ‘Wow, that's awesome. We could bring that here and we could do something with that,’” Roy said. “The case was no different with generative AI.”
