How AI and existing technology are transforming class action and mass litigation

Our Class Action Navigator project

In our previous roadmap, we focused on the EU Directive on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers, also known as the Class Action Directive. The Directive, which came into force in December 2020, gave EU Member States until December 2022 to adopt its provisions into national law and until June 2023 to apply them. We quickly realised that the Directive creates significant challenges and opportunities for both consumers and businesses in the EU, especially in the CEE region, where consumer protection laws and enforcement differ widely and where cross-border disputes are frequent. We therefore investigated how AI can be used to leverage Schoenherr-curated content to help our clients navigate this complex and ever-evolving legal landscape more easily.

At the start of 2023, we launched a pilot project and developed our own AI solution, the Class Action Navigator. This enhanced our traditional infocorner by enabling users to ask specific legal questions across multiple jurisdictions related to the Directive and its national transposition. The Class Action Navigator is based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), an AI framework that combines language models with curated information retrieval to produce more accurate answers. Instead of relying only on preexisting training data, RAG pulls relevant information from our curated database during a query. This method enhances the AI's accuracy by using domain-specific information, reducing the risk of errors or outdated responses. The result is a powerful yet simple and user-friendly tool that can answer a wide range of legal questions related to the Directive and its national implementation.

To find out more about our class action navigator or if you want to test it, check out our website or reach out to our legal tech and innovation team.

AI and tech supported workflows in mass litigation proceedings

Filing a class action is one of many options, yet businesses continue to face the threat of mass claims. At Schoenherr, where we often represent businesses in mass litigation proceedings, we understand that handling such cases is not only a legal but also an administrative challenge. This is where AI and legal tech come in. By leveraging established legal tech tools like document automation as well as case management and collaboration platforms, combined with advanced AI workflows, we are upgrading our ability to handle mass litigation proceedings.

On the surface, these three components are essential for addressing these types of proceedings. Case management and collaboration solutions handle the project management part, allowing multiple parties to exchange documents, view the status of the proceedings, assess risk and cover reporting needs, while also managing submission deadlines and milestones. Smart document automation capabilities help with drafting repetitive but customisable submissions and documents with complex conditions. Finally, AI can provide support in multiple stages, starting with the preparations for these proceedings, clustering and extraction of existing documentation, and intake and extraction workflows involving incoming submissions. While these components may seem simple, at Schoenherr, we believe the secret sauce lies in mastering these workflows at a deeper level, particularly by integrating new AI capabilities. Effective document automation also requires the right tools and solutions for the job.

We see huge potential and a current momentum in integrating technology in a smart and meaningful way in these types of legal workflows and at Schoenherr we have a proactive stance around innovation and adopting these enhanced ways of working. On the other hand it should not be underestimated how fast adoption can happen when driven by actual pain-points that hurt. At the moment, a very good example for adaption is the Regional Civil Court in Stuttgart that built an AI Assistant to be prepared for future mass claims to come (read more in this JUVE article: (in German)).

authors: Andrei Salajan, Marguerita Sedrati-Müller