Three Considerations for Personal Injury Attorneys Embracing AI

Legal practice doesn’t look the way it used to. What was once a paper-heavy process is now being shaped by tools that speed up medical record reviews, improve documentation, and even help draft legal materials. It’s a real shift in how work gets done, and it’s giving attorneys a clear edge.

However, if you're a personal injury attorney exploring legal tech, the choices can quickly become overwhelming. How do you determine which legal technology is right for your firm? And how can you ensure the solution you choose is compliant, secure, and actually fits your use case?

In this blog, I’ll share insights from my recent webinar “Enhancing Efficiency in Personal Injury Law” with Peter Wilborn, Attorney at Wilborn Law and Founder of the Bike Law Network, and break down what every AI attorney should consider when evaluating legal technology for their firm.

What Every AI Attorney Needs to Know About Legal Tech

Legal AI tools offer numerous benefits that can improve the efficiency of legal teams. These benefits include: greater accuracy in document reviews and medical data analysis, greater customer satisfaction, and cost savings.

For example, AI can efficiently review medical records, highlight contradictions between physician notes, and organize vast amounts of information in minutes instead of hours. It can also help attorneys keep timelines straight, track evolving symptoms across different reports, and assess damages more thoroughly.

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That said, finding and implementing the right AI solution takes time and careful planning. You need to have a clear sense of how the technology will fit into your day-to-day processes. You also need to have a clear understanding of the accuracy and reliability of the tool, and how it generates its answers. 

Choosing the wrong tool can have serious consequences in terms of lost time, courtroom mistakes, and potential reputational damage if the tool you've chosen isn't compliant or secure.

Here are three things personal injury attorneys should consider when adding legal tech into their firm:

1. Identify the Right Use Case

Not all technology applications will be relevant to every law firm. Therefore, it's important to determine the areas where AI can deliver the most immediate value. Here are some examples of valuable legal tech applications for attorneys:

• Document Review: You can use AI to quickly scan and sort through legal or medical documents, flagging relevant details or clauses and reducing review time.
• Medical Record Review: For personal injury attorneys, AI makes it easier to spot key information in medical records, saving time and reducing the chance of missing something important.
• Legal Research: Use AI to quickly surface case law, spot patterns, or keep up with changes in legal trends.
• Contract Review and Drafting: Automate the process of reviewing or generating contracts to save time and reduce manual work.
• Billing and Timekeeping: Use AI to handle routine admin tasks like time tracking and invoicing, so your team can focus on legal work.

By identifying the most relevant use cases, law firms can implement solutions that directly address their pain points and increase overall efficiency.

Remember, implementing new tech doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Instead of overhauling entire workflows at once, law firms can consider starting with a pilot program and expanding gradually. 

For example, you can try first introducing AI for a single task, like saving time on medical record reviews or streamlining legal research. By starting small, you can more easily assess the impact of the AI, assess efficiency gains and garner company feedback before attempting a more wide-scale adoption.

Once the initial implementation proves successful, technology can be scaled to other legal processes, ensuring a smooth transition with minimal disruption to daily operations.

2. Select the Right Tools

Selecting the right tools is crucial for success. With so many free options on the market, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, it can be tempting to use them across the board. But it's important to match the tool to the task and understand the limitations of general-purpose AI, especially when accuracy, compliance, and context matter.

During the webinar, I asked Peter what he thought about using free or open-source AI as a solution to time-consuming medical record reviews. 

“I think it’s a disaster,” Peter said. “People hear AI and they think all tools are the same—and that's absolutely not the case. I think most of us are familiar with the problems of phantom case law. I am stunned that people trust open source AI. I think it's insane.”

Peter went on to emphasize the importance of choosing AI solutions that are intentionally built for legal and medical use cases, in a controlled, secure environment.

“I’m a strong believer in understanding the differences between AI tools, and in choosing a platform that’s specific, focused, and part of a closed ecosystem, not an open one,” said Peter.

Here’s why free, open-source tools often fall short:

While general-purpose solutions like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini can be useful for a wide range of tasks, such as drafting emails and brainstorming, they often struggle when it comes to understanding, contextualizing, and extracting the critical information lawyers need, here’s why:

1. They aren’t built to be transparent.

General-purpose AI may present information without any explanation or without a way to trace how or why it generated that result. This creates issues with transparency, auditability, and trust. 

It also raises regulatory and compliance risks. That’s why it’s essential to work with a tech provider that prioritizes transparency, including:

• Clear, traceable outputs
• Compliance with industry regulations
• Robust security certifications like HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II
• A full audit trail for every piece of information

2. They weren’t designed for lawyers.

These tools aren’t built to meet the unique needs of legal professionals or understand the nuances of medical and legal terminology. Look for a platform designed specifically for attorneys.

3. They often hide the true cost.

Free tools can seem very appealing at first, but they often lack the support, accuracy and compliance legal teams need to perform their jobs at the required level. What at first might look like a quick win can lead to hours double-checking results–or even worse, a critical mistake that could jeopardize a case.

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Choosing the right AI tool isn’t just about speed. It’s about trust, quality, and long-term value. Law firms that adopt purpose-built solutions are better positioned to handle growing caseloads, reduce operational bottlenecks, and deliver better outcomes for their clients.

3. Prepare Your Team for Adoption

So, you've decided to move forward with legal technology. You’ve identified your use case and selected the right tool to meet your firm’s needs. Now what?

Successfully implementing new technology takes more than just making the right purchase, it also requires preparing your team for change.

Resistance to new technology is common. And with legal AI in particular, many professionals have questions and concerns about how it will affect their roles and responsibilities. Addressing these concerns early is key to driving adoption and building confidence in the solution.

Here are a few of the most common concerns and how to address them:

1. Fear of Job Loss

Attorneys and support staff may worry that AI will replace them. It’s important to clarify that legal AI is designed to enhance their work, not act as a replacement. By automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks like document review or timeline creation, AI allows your team to focus on higher-value legal work, case strategy, and client relationships.‍

2. Skepticism About Accuracy

Some attorneys are hesitant to trust AI tools. This is often the case if they've had bad experience with generic tools–which aren't trained or designed for specialized legal purposes.

However, much of this skepticism can be mitigated by finding the right tools. That means tools that are built for the purpose. Tools that are fully transparent, and allow users to trace the results back to the source to easily fact-check the AI's output. This kind of transparency can build trust and encourage long-term adoption.

3. Training Gaps

Even the best tools will stall without proper onboarding. Make sure your team has access to hands-on training, short walkthroughs, and real use cases. Reinforce that there’s a learning curve and offer ongoing support to ensure users are confident and comfortable incorporating AI into their workflows.

4. Ethical and Regulatory Concerns

Concerns about the consequences of using biased data or opaque algorithms are valid. Typically, AI is trained on historical data, which means it could unintentionally perpetuate bias or discrimination.

For this reason, it's important to choose a tool that prioritizes ethical use. This means avoiding correlation-based decision-making and providing full transparency in its processes.

5. Concerns About Billable Hours

Some firms worry that AI efficiency could reduce billable hours. But in many cases, AI can actually help solve for staff shortages and better allocate resources. By reducing time spent on low-value tasks, attorneys can focus on strategic legal work, advocacy, and client service—areas where their time is best spent. In the long run, AI can help reduce burnout and improve overall productivity without compromising profitability.

Discover a More Efficient Way to Review Medical Records and Create Demand Packages

Reviewing medical records is essential for drafting demand letters and building personal injury cases, as it provides key evidence for causation, damages, and liability. However, manually doing this is arduous and time-consuming, draining valuable resources. 

To do this effectively, law firms need efficient, accurate, and compliant methods to streamline both medical and billing document reviews.

Download our guide to learn more about your options for more efficient medical record reviews.

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