While AI is not able to read a witness, gauge credibility, or build trust with a jury like lawyers, it can make preparation more efficient and thorough and help present information in a more digestible and compelling way. Below are practical ways litigators can weave AI into their everyday litigation practice and not get left behind.
Sharper Research, Stronger Cases
Building
a strong case starts with a solid grasp of the legal concepts, which often means
thorough legal research at the outset. We have all heard cautionary tales of
lawyers submitting AI-drafted motions to the court that cite hallucinated (fabricated)
cases for propositions of law that don’t exist. But if used properly, AI can
enhance—not replace—traditional research methods.
AI
can help you come up with better search terms to get to the cases you need.
Start by defining the issue and breaking it into core components like the cause
of action or doctrine you want to research, key contract language or clause
types, procedural posture, remedy sought, and any industry‑specific
terminology. Then ask AI to generate jurisdiction‑specific term variants and draft
Boolean strings designed to target cases addressing your issue. Ask it to
include or exclude terms that commonly create false positives, suggest how
courts in your venue typically frame the concept, and flag time filters
tied to rule/law changes that may impact your results. You can incorporate key fact
patterns you think are material to the case’s holding and ask for search terms to
help identify similar fact patterns in the results. As you review your initial
search results, prompt AI to refine the terms and strategy.
Once
you have identified the key cases, AI can quickly and efficiently summarize
holdings, extract controlling standards, and highlight fact patterns most
analogous to your case. AI can also help you distinguish cases cited by your
opponent to use in response to motions or at hearings. But remember, treat the AI outputs as starting points: you should always verify
the law, read the full opinion, and Shepardize or KeyCite before relying on or
citing them for any proposition.
Crafting Case Themes That Stick
Once you have a solid legal foundation, you need a compelling narrative that resonates with a factfinder or judge. Every litigator knows that the most successful themes do more than summarize facts or legal issues—they evoke fairness, credibility, and common sense. AI can be a surprisingly effective sounding board for developing and refining your trial theme to one that sticks.
Start by giving AI a high-level overview of your case: the core claims and defenses (or include the pleadings), the key documents or facts, and your preliminary theory of the case. Then ask it to propose case themes from the perspective of your client, the opposing party, and even a neutral observer. By shifting perspectives, AI can help reveal which themes naturally align with the evidence and which sound forced or inconsistent. By anticipating the opposing party’s themes, you can create a strategy and develop evidence to counter that narrative.
Once you have several potential themes that support your case, use AI to suggest variations on the themes, test and strengthen them. For example:
- Support the theme with evidence: Ask AI to identify which documents, witnesses, or facts from your case best support each theme. If your message is that “the delay resulted from the general contractor’s failure to coordinate trades,” AI can flag the communications, reports, or schedules that most effectively illustrate that idea.
- Play
devil’s advocate: Ask how opposing counsel might frame the same facts
or what emotional counter-narrative a jury might find more compelling. The
exercise helps you anticipate and inoculate against those attacks at
hearings, in depositions, and ultimately, at trial.
- Sharpen
your messaging: AI excels at distilling complex ideas into concise,
impactful phrasing. You can prompt it to make your theme more memorable, approachable,
or emotionally resonant. For example, I recently used AI to help weave a trial
theme into an opening statement I drafted, and it suggested some memorable
one-liners to include throughout that reiterated the theme and drove
home the points I wanted the factfinders to remember.
Litigators should always treat AI outputs as brainstorming sessions. Critically analyze the results and decide which theme feels authentic to you and your client and aligns with the facts, tone, and posture of the case.
Depositions and Expert Reports with Fewer Blind Spots
Deposition preparation is one of the easiest ways to incorporate AI into your litigation practice. Lawyers can shave hours off their preparation by using AI tools to isolate a single issue or topic from voluminous discovery documents, summarize prior depositions, and create charts on key issues. AI can generate a timeline of key events or summarize a lengthy document for you to easily reference throughout a deposition or in witness preparation. For example, within seconds, it can extract and create a chart of all contract provisions on specific topics like change order requests or scheduling requirement; it can also breakdown each witness/party’s position on an issue like who they claim is responsible for the defective condition.
You can also use AI to prepare your fact or expert witnesses for their testimony. Ask AI to analyze prior deposition transcripts or reports and flag inconsistencies or vulnerabilities. Most of the outputs will be ones you’ve already identified and prepared for, but it will likely generate a few ideas you had not previously considered. Prep your client for how to handle those issues. AI can even create a mock cross-examination and generate questions in a variety of tones. This can be used by your colleagues to conduct a mock cross examination of your client.
Construction cases usually involve technical or data-heavy expert testimony. AI is an issue-spotting tool that you can use both offensively and defensively for expert reports and depositions. For example, before finalizing your expert’s report, ask AI to identify any analytical gaps or flag any inconsistencies within the report and challenge the conclusions from the opposing parties’ perspective. You can then address any shortcomings before finalizing the report—and before a Daubert challenge. AI also cuts down on the time it takes to synthesize CVs, expert publications and sources, prior Daubert rulings, and court opinions in order to identify impeachment angles. While AI cannot replace the expert (or lawyer’s) judgment, it accelerates the review process, helps lawyers ask sharper, more informed questions, and eliminates the element of surprise for your witnesses.
Ethics and Guardrails
As with any litigation tool, traditional ethical rules still apply. AI’s efficiency is no substitute for professional judgment, supervision, or confidentiality. Lawyers should never upload client materials to public systems and should only use secure, firm and client approved AI platforms to protect privileged and confidential data. And as mentioned above, you should always verify the results. AI can misinterpret nuances that lawyers know matter—words like “delay,” “impact,” or “notice” may carry specific legal significance that AI does not pick up on. Treat AI as a non-lawyer assistant that requires attorney oversight. Use it to expand your creativity, see the case from various perspectives, and make your advocacy more persuasive.
Debrán O’Neil is a litigation partner in Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal, L.L.P.’s construction practice group in Dallas, Texas. She primarily represents manufacturers and public and private owners and developers in connection with the construction of large commercial and infrastructure projects throughout Texas. She can be reached at doneil@ccsb.com.
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