Legal technology expert Jared Correia argues that law firms are making a critical mistake by rushing to implement artificial intelligence without proper groundwork in place.
The core argument is straightforward: structured intelligence must come before artificial intelligence if law firms want meaningful, lasting results from their technology investments.
Correia, a consultant and legal technology expert who hosts the “Adventures in Legal Tech” series on Above the Law, has been vocal about the sequencing problem facing the legal industry.
Many firms are drawn to the promise of AI tools that can draft documents, summarise case law, and automate client communications, but the underlying data infrastructure is often not ready to support them.
Without clean, well-organised, and consistently structured data, AI systems have little reliable material to work with, producing outputs that can mislead rather than assist legal professionals.
Structured intelligence refers to the foundational layer of organised workflows, knowledge management systems, and coherent data practices that firms should establish before any AI layer is introduced.
Law firms that skip this step often find that AI tools surface inconsistent results, reinforcing bad habits or replicating historical errors already embedded in the firm’s documents and processes.
The legal sector has historically been slow to adopt technology at scale, but the recent surge of interest in generative AI has compressed what should be a methodical, multi-stage transformation into a rushed purchasing decision.
Correia’s position reflects a growing consensus among legal technology consultants that the most successful AI implementations are built on top of deliberate, well-maintained operational structures.
Knowledge management, matter tagging, client data hygiene, and standardised document templates are among the building blocks that firms are advised to get right before deploying any AI solution.
The stakes are particularly high in legal practice, where errors caused by poorly trained or poorly informed AI tools can have serious consequences for clients and for a firm’s professional reputation.
Firms that invest the time to structure their intelligence first are likely to find that AI tools become genuinely powerful accelerators rather than expensive sources of additional administrative burden.
The “Adventures in Legal Tech” series continues to track how practitioners across the industry are navigating the gap between technology marketing and operational reality inside law firms.