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P E E R T O P E E R M A G A Z I N E · W I N T E R 2 0 2 5 45 T he promise of artificial intelligence in law feels almost boundless. Each week brings new announcements about firms adopting generative tools to automate drafting, summarize case law, or predict outcomes. But beneath the excitement lies a quieter, more stubborn problem, one that technology cannot solve alone. Most firms' data is not ready for AI. Litigation teams in particular face the steepest challenge. Their work spans years, involves countless stakeholders, and touches everything from discovery to budgeting. That creates a mountain of unstructured information, including pleadings, correspondence, financial records, and court updates, often stored across dozens of systems that do not talk to one another. Before AI can be transformative, firms must get serious about something far less glamorous: governance. That means understanding, structuring, and maintaining litigation data so it is reliable, consistent, and ready to power intelligent tools. Without that foundation, AI is like building a skyscraper on sand. THE REALITY OF LITIGATION DATA TODAY If you ask a litigation coordinator where a document lives, the answer might depend on the day. Matter data lives in shared drives, emails, billing systems, case management tools, and sometimes even handwritten notes. Case teams rely on spreadsheets to track filings, manually copy data between systems, and recreate reports that never quite match. This fragmentation carries a real cost. Attorneys spend time hunting for the correct version of information. Teams duplicate work or make decisions using outdated data. Forecasting legal spend becomes guesswork. At a governance level, the issue is simple: poor data management leads to poor decision-making. Without a trusted source of truth, leaders cannot see where cases stand, how much exposure they face, or how workloads are distributed. Even firms that have invested in practice management software often struggle to enforce consistent data entry. When each matter owner or paralegal uses their own naming conventions, automation breaks down. A tool cannot identify trends or flag anomalies if the trial date is recorded inconsistently across cases. WHY DATA GOVERNANCE IS THE FOUNDATION FOR AI Generative AI has raised expectations and also exposed weaknesses. Every AI system, no matter how advanced, relies on the quality of its inputs. "Garbage in, garbage out" is more than a cliché; it is a technical truth. Structured, standardized data is what allows AI to function responsibly and accurately. If a firm wants to analyze case outcomes, predict litigation costs, or automate routine updates, it needs consistent, validated information. Without that, even the most innovative tool can produce unreliable or misleading results.

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