At the height of witness examinations for the UK government’s Covid-19 inquiry in 2023, Norton Rose Fulbright was receiving thousands of documents a week, which it was handling as part of its pro bono work for charity Save the Children.
The inquiry, launched in 2022, was examining decision-making in government during the pandemic, and the charity had wanted to look at how children’s rights had been considered in policy decisions. “Even with a fairly substantially staffed review team — which comprised paralegals, Norton Rose Fulbright lawyers and barristers — [there was] absolutely no way we could get through that amount of material and find the stuff that was actually relevant,” explains David Wilkins, e-disclosure technical lead at the firm.
So the legal team used artificial intelligence to find and prioritise the most relevant documents from the inquiry for review, in just one example of how law firms are applying technology to increase the impact of their pro bono work and allow them to take on much larger projects.
