Pasquale believes there will “certainly be lawsuits” because in some cases the technology “fails predictably, violates people’s rights or simply does not work as intended.”

“Companies are nervous,” adds Harry Surden, a law professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “They need advice on policies around AI, so they’re turning to law firms that develop AI policies and practices to help them.”

More than half a dozen tech lawyers from across the United States who spoke to BI agreed that AI—particularly generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini—is experiencing a heyday in the legal field.

The lawyers receive numerous calls from clients and prospective clients wondering how they and their companies can appropriately integrate AI into their business processes, as well as questions about confidentiality and potential legal implications of using this technology.

An experienced tech lawyer predicted an upswing lasting at least 10 years

“There are so many unanswered legal questions right now and so many different laws being proposed that I think this will be a boon for at least 10 years, if not longer,” James Gatto, a partner at Sheppard Mullin and co-head of the firm’s AI industry team of about 100 lawyers, told BI.

Gatto and other lawyers compared the boom in generative AI to the rise of the Internet in the 1990s.

“Similar to the internet, every company is going to use AI and every company is going to have to deal with the AI ​​issues, but most companies aren’t really prepared for it,” Gatto said. “So they have to get a lawyer.”

According to Gatto, Sheppard Mullin, an international company headquartered in California, has received numerous calls in recent months from companies seeking advice on using generative AI.

“We’re seeing everything from creative work like music, gaming, etc. to healthcare,” said Gatto, who noted, “Every industry, every sector, every type of company is figuring out how they want to use AI, and they all need help.”

And companies spend a lot of money on this legal assistance.

Gatto’s team helps companies develop AI policies and form internal AI governance committees, then trains and educates them on key legal issues that may arise.

This type of work could cost a company anywhere from tens of thousands to more than $100,000, says the veteran attorney who has been advising clients on AI-related issues for two decades.

Companies are investigating the impact of AI on their business

Peter Werner, a partner at global law firm Cooley, which represents Meta and Google in AI-related litigation, called it a “very exciting time” for technology-focused lawyers.

Werner said the boom was similar to the late 1990s, when law firms specialized in the Internet and only a few companies experimented with the Internet.

The Internet has now become “ubiquitous,” he said.

“Every company has an online presence,” said Werner. “Every company has legal problems with its online presence.”

“The same goes for AI,” he said.

AI is a topic that all of Cooley’s approximately 10,000 customers, mostly in the technology and life sciences sectors, are concerned with, Werner said.

“And it’s not just companies that are developing AI technology as part of the infrastructure of the AI ​​economy,” Werner said. “Every company, no matter what industry, needs to figure out how to evolve and stay competitive by leveraging AI and related technologies.”

Werner said that in many recent cases, companies that “historically have not been within our remit” have turned to the firm seeking legal help on the subject of AI and potential impacts related to the use of this technology.

Companies are exploring how AI will impact their terms of service and how the technology can be used for employee recruitment or other aspects of business operations, Werner said.

“We work with some of the world’s most advanced AI companies, defending them in significant, high-stakes litigation and advising them on their business model,” Werner said.

And then there are the companies outside the technology industry that have turned to the company for help with AI “and everything in between,” he said.

“There are all levels of complexity at all different stages of business development in all different regions and all different industries,” Werner said. “They’re basically wrestling with the same question: How will AI, and in particular generative AI and related technologies, impact my business?”

AI raises a number of new legal concerns

While there are no uniform federal laws or regulations governing the use of AI in the United States, the technology raises a number of new legal concerns related to intellectual property rights, privacy and data protection, liability, and human rights issues related to bias and discrimination.

AI companies have already faced copyright lawsuits from authors, visual artists, news agencies and computer programmers who argue that their original works have been used to train AI tools without their permission.

“There are a number of legal questions. Some of them have clearer answers, and some of them are a real gray area that I think will probably have to be addressed by the courts or Congress,” said Frank Gerratana, a partner at the law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, PC.

This is typically the case with new technologies, stressed Gerratana and other lawyers.

“The difficult thing for me as a lawyer,” he says, “is that any new technology often raises problems that we haven’t seen before. So the answers our clients want aren’t always clear.”

The international law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, headquartered in New York, has also seen an increase in calls from both existing and new clients over the past 10 to 18 months thanks to artificial intelligence. This is what the firm’s lawyers say, and they expect even more inquiries in the near future.

“We recently saw one of our pharmaceutical clients have to contractually agree not to use AI in a certain part of the work they were hired to do. So we’re going to see a lot of these kinds of interactions in the transactional, contractual space,” said Elisa Botero, a partner at the firm.

Michel Paradis, another partner at the firm, said there have also been requests from companies regarding confidentiality when it comes to entering sensitive information into generative AI tools.

“AI has at least the effect of putting very sophisticated, very complicated technologies into the hands of many people doing many different things and facing all kinds of regulatory systems. They are creating – let’s be honest – all kinds of legal problems that they may not even fully understand and that make these new tools possible in the first place,” Paradis said.

Paradis and Botero expect the role of a technology lawyer to expand.

“I think you’ll see lawyers with technical backgrounds having to learn new areas of law that they’ve never encountered,” and vice versa, Paradis says.

AI could also drastically change the way law firms work

Werner, a partner at Cooley, called it a “very dynamic moment” for tech lawyers and warned that law firms also need to think about how AI is disrupting their own industry.

“Today we are doing great,” Werner said, before raising questions about how AI will impact the legal industry in the future.

“Large law firms that do not thoroughly address issues related to their business model will certainly be in trouble in 10, 15 or 20 years,” he warned.