AI Reshapes Legal Discovery with Generative and Agentic Tools

Artificial intelligence has become essential in legal discovery workflows, with generative and agentic tools significantly reducing costs and timelines. As of 2026, 37% of professionals actively use generative AI, up from 12% two years prior. These tools have evolved beyond traditional Technology-Assisted Review (TAR) to analyze documents, make relevance determinations, and draft privilege logs with reasoning and citation grounding. In complex cases, privilege review leverages generative AI to identify privileged documents and draft logs at scale, compressing early case assessment from weeks to days. Agentic AI represents the next evolution, executing multi-step workflows under attorney supervision, such as identifying custodians and applying deduplication. However, the increased complexity demands rigorous audit trails and defensibility protocols to withstand judicial scrutiny. The adoption of AI is not without risks, including shorter track records in court and the rise of AI-generated content as a discovery source. Firms are increasingly adopting incremental approaches, starting with single use cases and building defensible protocols to ensure AI serves as an infrastructure for better, faster, and more defensible legal work.

(Source：Blockchain News)