AT&T's legal department is working with OpenAI on a system to reduce the time lawyers spend gathering facts, documents, and past work before they can advise the business. The project builds on LegalEdge, AT&T's team of attorneys, legal professionals, technologists, and project managers that already applies AI to major legal matters.
One planned piece is a natural-language intake system that AT&T Chief Compliance Officer Bill Ryan describes as a front door for requests coming in from across the business. The system would classify and prioritize requests, connect them with relevant precedent and past work, and give the responsible legal professional historical context and recommended first steps. General Counsel David McAtee frames the underlying work as building the plumbing for a knowledge layer that the whole department draws on.
McAtee says decision-making will always remain with the lawyers. Ryan says what excites him is expanding the department's ability to provide legal judgment at greater scale. This article is based on a single OpenAI case study, so the claims are AT&T's and OpenAI's own rather than independently verified.