Much of this article is taken from a more comprehensive AI eBook. Click here to view it.

The importance of data quality in legal AI

Now that Artificial Intelligence has become part of our everyday lives at home and work, it’s important to understand exactly what goes into the creation of artificial intelligence, beyond computing power, and why it’s important.

AI isn’t an off-the-shelf commodity – it is the result of the combination of subject-matter expertise, AI expertise, and data. The data that is loaded into the AI-enabled system is the foundational element. If that data is inaccurate, incomplete, or irrelevant, the consequences can be dire.

With most applications of artificial intelligence in our personal lives, bad data might mean off-target movie and music recommendations or autocorrect failures. But bad data in a Legal AI solution could result in reputational damage, malpractice suits, or costly losses of cases and clients.

Look for data quality before data quantity

There has been a lot of talk about big data, but perhaps not enough discussion on quality data. Yes, the quantity of data is important to determine consensus and identify patterns and connections, but if the data isn’t relevant, robust, accurate, or up to date to start with, then the analysis and answers that come from the data are suspect at best. This is an old principle in computer science known as “Garbage in, garbage out.”

If you are considering implementing AI technology, or any data-driven application, focus your attention on the quality of the data and its sources.

With legal AI-enabled solutions such as Westlaw, quality data means data that has been:

• Curated by attorney-editors who review, annotate, organize, and provide stewardship of our legal content. This oversight ensures that the data is accurate, up to date, and relevant.
• Informed by subject-matter experts such as the renowned attorneys, judges, and professors who write our industry-leading law books, as well our staff of reference attorneys and attorney-editors. This ensures real-world perspectives and practical advice.
• Enhanced by attorney-editors who incorporate headnotes, notes of decisions, the West Key Number System, providing valuable metadata needed to make machine learning more effective.
• Improved by users who work with the data every day and contribute to the crowdsourced practical wisdom by collecting documents, selecting citations, and conducting legal research.

Quality data comes from quality assurance

The people that source, create, augment, and import data into an AI solution are critical to the success and effectiveness of the AI solution. Since artificial intelligence comes from human intelligence, it’s important to consider who contributed to the quality of the data.

For the AI-enabled legal solutions created by Thomson Reuters, this includes thousands of bar-admitted attorney-editors and practice area experts, the authors of our renowned legal books, data scientists, AI and machine learning experts, engineers, designers, and others collaborating on creating solutions from the ground up in innovation-focused environments, such as one of our Thomson Reuters Labs or our Center for Cognitive Computing. Quality means “useful” and “efficient” as much as “accurate” and “on-point.”

Conclusion
When you consider AI-enabled legal solutions, hold the quality of the data to the highest standard. The data should have been created and augmented with your specific needs in mind, and it should seem like it came from a collaborative effort of experts, not a collection of content feeds. After all, the purpose of artificial intelligence is to deliver answers – not more data.

Learn more about what makes a good legal artificial intelligence solution by downloading our eBook, “Not All Legal AI Is Created Equal.”

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Amy Larson is a Director in Small Law Firm Customer Marketing and Firm Central at Thomson Reuters. She has over 17 years of experience in technology marketing with extensive focus on learning how technology can meet the needs of attorneys. Amy has been involved in numerous product launches throughout her tenure, public relations efforts, interviewing customers and telling their stories, and often writes and distributes information on legal practice management.

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