CBA Record November-December 2024

Tools to Improve Your Law Practice Hot in Tax Law: Bloomberg Document Translator Tool By Ted S. Kontopoulos, Attorney for the IRS, Chief Counsel, Associate Chief Counsel (International) in Washington, D.C. Tax practitioners need reliable document translation tools. Con sider the ever-increasing amount of U.S. businesses that transact internationally or the growing number of foreign-born Ameri cans. These drivers, among others, mean that tax practitioners confront more legal and financial documents in non-English lan guages today than ever. Tax practitioners increasingly use the Bloomberg Tax data base’s Document Translator tool to analyze non-English docu ments. The tool offers English translation from fifteen languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The tool’s software is also compatible with translating Word documents, online webpages, portable document formats (PDFs), images, XML files, Power Point slides, and Excel spreadsheets. Mechanically, a compatible document is first uploaded to the tool. (Translation speed generally depends on the size of the weigh its limitations. On one hand, the maximum file size for upload is 10MB, certain non-English symbols produce awkward formatting, and some phrases still require a human translator to confirm accuracy. On the other hand, the tool cuts costs for human translation services and provides information security (Bloomberg does not store uploaded documents). Lexology and the Retired Lawyer By John Levin, Retired Assistant General Counsel, GATX Corporation Just because you retire from the active practice of law does not mean you have lost interest in your specialty or what is happening in the profession. Keeping track of your specialty should not be a problem. By the time you retire, you should know the relevant sources of information on changes in your specialty. Keeping up with changes in the practice of law is another matter: how do you know what is happening if you are no longer doing it day to day? Here is where Lexology – a web service furnished with your CBA membership – provides an answer. The service provides data and analysis from a multitude of law firms on a multitude of topics, including “Legal Practice.” The service contains articles and commentary on what is happening in the working world, such as marketing and managing the law practice, as well as the uploaded non-English document.) Once the translation is complete, a Word document automatically downloads from the internet browser to the local device. Overall, the tool’s benefits out

personal data because it may violate the attorney-client privilege when the lawyer doesn’t know how the information is being gleaned for later use. Certainly, any document filed with the court should be care fully reviewed, and some courts require that filings containing generative-AI information must be disclosed. The same is true for any client communications. And it is unquestioned that if a lawyer spends less time using a generative AI tool, one can charge a client only the time that was spent, not the time it would have taken to produce it without AI so the client benefits from the increased operational efficiency. Experts generally agree that the first necessary step is to become familiar with AI, and each firm should form a policy for its lawyers and staff before dabbling in an area that is quickly changing. Law Firms Rushing into the AI Practice Void By Clifford Gately, Senior Business Development Manager, Quarles & Brady LLP Few things are hotter than Artificial Intelligence right now. AI law firm applications can be broadly divided into two buckets:

Internal—law firms adopting inter nal generative AI tools and policies— and external—law firms providing and promoting legal services to cli ents in the AI space. As to the former, a 2023 survey conducted by the ABA showed that 35% of law firms now utilize AI-driven tools to enhance their practice (as compared to 15% in 2020). Hard data on when law firms first started offering AI practice groups is

difficult to find. Paul Hastings may have been an early adopter when it launched an Artificial Intelligence Practice Group in March 2019. Four years later, an article appeared in The Ameri can Lawyer that pronounced “In ‘Ultra-Dynamic’ AI Environ ment, More Law Firms Are Launching Devoted Teams,” citing Husch Blackwell, Winston Strawn, and Norton Rose among the firms that created AI practices in Q1 of 2024. In May, Sullivan & Cromwell announced its AI practice. At the time, a Reuters article reported “Several other large U.S. law firms have also established dedicated AI practice groups over the past year and a half, hoping to capitalize on a surge in AI-related dealmaking, regulatory, and litigation work.” An informal review of 10 firms with AI multidisciplinary groups shows them to be most active in the IP space, trade secrets, and cybersecurity/data privacy—the latter due to the need for policies governing how employees and companies use the tech nology. Other frequently quoted practice areas are technology transactions and finance, regulatory compliance, entity formation and governance, employment law, and complex litigation.

CBA RECORD 21