AI Implementation Roadmaps
Legal AI RFP Template for Litigation Support Workflows
By Anthony Villanueva ·
A well-structured RFP is the foundation for selecting the right AI technology for litigation support. This template covers the technical, professional responsibility, and commercial dimensions that litigation-specific AI procurement requires.
Litigation support AI encompasses a wide range of applications — e-discovery document review, legal research, deposition preparation, case strategy analysis, and brief drafting — each with distinct technical requirements, quality standards, and professional responsibility considerations. An RFP that treats these as a single category will receive proposals that are difficult to evaluate comparatively. A well-structured RFP defines the specific use cases, the quality standards for each, and the governance requirements that all proposals must address.
Define technical requirements for litigation
Technical Requirements Section: Define the specific litigation tasks the system must perform, the volume of documents or queries it must process, the accuracy and recall thresholds required for each task type, the integration requirements with the firm's existing e-discovery and document management infrastructure, and the latency requirements for each task.
Recall in document review — the system's ability to find all relevant documents, not just some of them — is a litigation-specific requirement that general AI system benchmarks do not address. The RFP must specify recall requirements explicitly.
Detail professional responsibility requirements
Professional Responsibility Requirements Section: Require each proposing vendor to address: how their system handles attorney-client privileged communications in a document review population, what controls prevent inadvertent disclosure of privileged documents, how the system supports attorney supervision of AI review decisions, and what citation verification capabilities exist for AI-generated research. The ABA's guidance on attorney competence and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework should be referenced as the evaluation standards.
Specify essential commercial contract terms
Commercial Terms Section: Pricing structure (per-matter, per-seat, or usage-based), implementation timeline and milestones, performance guarantees with defined remedies, data handling and breach notification commitments, and contract termination rights if the system does not meet defined performance thresholds. These terms should be required responses, not nice-to-haves — vendors who cannot commit to performance standards contractually are vendors whose performance guarantees are not meaningful.
Frequently asked questions
Why must an RFP for litigation support AI explicitly specify recall requirements?
Technical Requirements Section: Define the specific litigation tasks the system must perform, the volume of documents or queries it must process, the accuracy and recall thresholds required for each task type, the integration requirements with the firm's existing e-discovery and document management infrastructure, and the latency requirements for each task.
Recall in document review — the system's ability to find all relevant documents, not just some of them — is a litigation-specific requirement that general AI system benchmarks do not address. The RFP must specify recall requirements explicitly.
What specific professional responsibility requirements should vendors address regarding document review?
Professional Responsibility Requirements Section: Require each proposing vendor to address: how their system handles attorney-client privileged communications in a document review population, what controls prevent inadvertent disclosure of privileged documents, how the system supports attorney supervision of AI review decisions, and what citation verification capabilities exist for AI-generated research. The ABA's guidance on attorney competence and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework should be referenced as the evaluation standards.
What commercial terms should be required responses in a litigation support AI RFP?
Commercial Terms Section: Pricing structure (per-matter, per-seat, or usage-based), implementation timeline and milestones, performance guarantees with defined remedies, data handling and breach notification commitments, and contract termination rights if the system does not meet defined performance thresholds. These terms should be required responses, not nice-to-haves — vendors who cannot commit to performance standards contractually are vendors whose performance guarantees are not meaningful.