As AI Enters Corporate Law, Legal Translation and Localization Are Key to Realizing Its Promise

With the rise of artificial intelligence, corporate law may not be the first thing people think of when they imagine its possibilities, but that doesn’t change the serious attention AI is gaining as a driver of change for this burdensome, communications-intensive area of global business. If the recent Thomson Reuters report “Ready or Not: Artificial Intelligence and Corporate Legal Departments” is any indication, AI’s transformative potential is especially robust within legal operations, from the analysis of legal information to the delivery of legal documents. Yet as technology continues to reshape the way legal professionals work and communicate, it is also bringing forth an imperative need for responsive and accurate localization support for global teams, highlighting the key role legal translation will continue to play in enabling the rollout of new capabilities.

The legal profession’s engagement with technology has been marked by a series of paradigm shifts. From typewriters to email, each advancement has redefined the legal communications landscape. Now, as AI becomes an integral part of legal workflows, its role in enhancing global communications is paramount. As legal departments leverage AI to streamline processes and gain insights, the readiness to communicate across languages becomes more critical than ever before.

Legal AI and Localization: A Symbiotic Relationship?

As well as corporate law, the advent of AI has brought forth remarkable advancements in translation technology, potentially bridging the language gap and fostering collaboration among multinational legal teams. Traditionally, legal document reviews required meticulous human effort, often leading to delays and inconsistencies. Now, however, AI is changing the game, automating document processes and enabling legal professionals to focus on the tougher questions. Yet when it comes to information sourced globally, the quality of that analysis depends directly on the ability to consolidate information through accurate translations. And as AI scales what law firms can accomplish, the ability to do just that is likelier to define global competitiveness.

Can AI itself solve the translation challenges of global corporate law? While it is tempting to look to tools like Meta’s freshly released SeamlessM4T – an algorithm said to process speech and text translations in hundreds of languages – their noted propensity for translation errors significantly undermines the degree of assurance legal operations rely on. By contrast, human-AI translation technology combines the strengths of automation and human expertise, ensuring accurate and timely translations that are essential for seamless cross-border communication. In all, AI has yet to replace professional localization as a support for global teams working within strict legal parameters, but it does appear to be raising the stakes for businesses trying to do without those services.  

When it comes to delivering on the promise of technology, localization can help in a number of key areas that distinguish competitive legal firms from more limited ones.

1. Enhancing Traditional Translation Needs: AI-driven translation tools have significantly improved the speed and efficiency of translating legal documents, contracts, and communications across languages. By entrusting their core translations to professional linguists able to validate information generated with such tools, legal teams can ultimately hope to communicate more rapidly, ensuring timely decision-making in global contexts.
2. Maintaining Accuracy and Nuance: Legal documents demand precision and nuanced language. AI translation technologies, supported by human expertise, ensure that legal terms and concepts are accurately conveyed in target languages and applied consistently, preventing misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
3. Leveraging Past Experiences: With translation memory and terminology management platforms, professional language service providers can store and categorize previous legal translations, creating a repository of knowledge that can be accessed by global teams. This centralized knowledge sharing enhances consistency and reduces redundancy in translations.
4. Human Review and Expertise: While AI facilitates the legal communication and translation process, human review remains essential for legal documents. Legal terminology, cultural nuances, and context-specific meanings often require human intervention to ensure translations align with legal standards and regulations, and the insights of local, in-country linguists are simply indispensable.

As legal departments adapt to AI’s growing influence, the role of professional localization services only becomes more pivotal. Responsive and accurate localization support is not just a necessity but a strategic advantage for global companies, particularly as their competitors work to support a greater range of cross-border communications between increasingly diverse language pairs. For businesses facing the challenges of conducting legal communications in multiple languages, CSOFT offers a full range of end-to-end legal translation services in over 250 languages. To learn more or get in touch, visit csoftintl.com.