Key Takeaway: Legal teams cannot afford to let governance fall behind amidst rapid AI adoption. AI innovation must be defensible by design. Evaluate AI use cases against defined outcomes, use AI and established eDiscovery tools where each adds the most value, and involve eDiscovery and litigation support teams early to establish governance, repeatable workflows, audit trails, and clear controls. This approach enables legal teams to pursue efficiency without sacrificing defensibility.

Every day, AI use in legal gains ground, particularly in litigation and eDiscovery. This signals that these tools are significantly simplifying, accelerating, and transforming how lawyers and legal staff develop case strategy, analyze information, and prepare legal work. The value of those benefits is apparent, yet many firms find they have less visibility than ever into how their teams are completing discovery work. This poses a difficult question for legal departments and law firms: What happens when efficiency bypasses the processes that make discovery defensible, and how do you ensure or measure if perceived efficiency is real and not just personal preference?

This issue does not negate the inherent benefits of legal AI and does not mean that firms must slow adoption. Rather, firms should focus on placing AI tools within a structure that preserves accountability, repeatability, and control. Without that structure, teams will struggle to determine what data was used, who performs the actions, which instructions are guiding the work, and whether the process complies with a protective order. Fortunately, a few crucial guidelines and best practices resolve these challenges.

Individual Convenience Is Not an Operating Model

AI tools give lawyers the ability to answer a question or identify a useful pattern. But that does not automatically make the surrounding workflow suitable for discovery.

eDiscovery and litigation support teams must manage obligations that extend beyond the immediate task. They need visibility into data, user activity, and process history. They must also respond quickly when lawyers, clients, or opposing parties ask how work was performed. When data sits outside the expected environment or activity is difficult to trace, answering those questions becomes slower and adds unnecessary stress.

The right test is not simply whether a lawyer prefers a specific tool. The organization must also consider whether its use is defensible, repeatable, and produces meaningful value. A positive individual experience is important, but it is not a substitute for an enterprise standard. For example, no one in the industry today would state with a straight face that just because a partner prefers it, printing all documents for their hard copy review is defensible or efficient. The same rationale applies to AI. Not every use delivers value or aligns with an organization’s governance requirements.

Use Each Tool for the Job it Does Best

Don’t treat legal AI and traditional eDiscovery technology as competing choices. They address different parts of the work. AI tools support case development and enable lawyers to interact with information efficiently. Established discovery platforms remain critical where the organization needs production capabilities, audit trails, controlled administration, and standardized templates. The strongest model combines those strengths instead of forcing one system to perform every task. And in fact, many of today’s best-in-class AI tools integrate or operate smoothly in partnership with more traditional eDiscovery tools when teams deploy them thoughtfully.

This approach also supports a more disciplined ROI analysis of evaluating specific use cases against defined outcomes rather than treating general adoption as proof of value. Such analysis includes determining where AI reduces effort, where existing workflows remain more effective, and where a proposed use presents unacceptable risk.

Build Governance With the People Closest to the Process

Because eDiscovery and litigation support professionals understand the operational, technical, and procedural requirements that surround discovery, it’s essential that legal departments and firms involve them at the outset. By working together, legal, technology, and support leaders can:

• Define approved use cases and the outcomes each use case should achieve.
• Document repeatable workflows, responsibilities, and escalation paths.
• Identify activities that require an audit trail or must remain in a traditional discovery platform.
• Establish shared templates instead of relying on individual practices.
• Measure cost, consistency, and business value.
• Perform a thorough analysis to ensure the use of AI does not create more human-in-the-loop quality control and oversight.
• Prohibit uses that cannot meet the organization’s legal or procedural requirements.

This structure does more than just manage risk. Crucially, it reduces duplicated effort, making workflows successful and reusable while giving lawyers the clear guidance they need to ascertain where each tool belongs in the process. It also enables organizations to automate work without sacrificing the controls that clients and courts require.

Make Innovation Defensible by Design

AI adoption will continue, and legal organizations must prepare for closer integration between AI capabilities and established eDiscovery workflows. An effective operating model will preserve the accessibility that lawyers value while maintaining the auditability, production controls, and process discipline that discovery demands.

Legal teams need not choose between innovation and defensibility. They should instead design for both. When lawyers, eDiscovery professionals, and litigation support teams build the model together, AI functions as more than an individual productivity tool. The opportunity lies in the combined impact, where 1 + 1 + 1 can equal 4. It acts as a repeatable capability that lowers operational friction, supports responsible automation, and enables the organization to adapt as the future of legal technology unfolds.

Learn more about Epiq Managed Services.


Brandon Hollinder, Vice President, eDiscovery and Cyber Solutions
Brandon works with clients to ensure effective design and expert implementation of their technology and professional service solutions. He guides clients in their journeys as they look to adopt and successfully integrate advanced analytics and generative AI solutions, among others.
 

Richard Pachella, Strategic Alliance Advisor
Rich partners with business professionals and legal case teams at corporations and law firms to enhance operational efficiencies through strategic planning, financial management, legal project management, and technology adoption. He collaborates with lawyers, eDiscovery professionals, business analysts, procurement professionals, practice support professionals, and C-suite executives to promote knowledge sharing throughout his clients’ organizations to translate business needs into strategy, policies, and procedures.