Fast, accurate execution of critical decision pathways is an essential part of winning any competition, and lawyers who successfully adopt AI early will have a distinct decision-making advantage
Lawyers are a lot like fighter pilots — both are highly trained, highly competitive, and operate in often intense environments. Likewise, both fighter pilots and lawyers operate in what combat operations experts call the OODA loop.
What is an OODA Loop?
OODA is an acronym that stands for: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. Originally developed by Colonel John Boyd (the designer of the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 fighter jet), the OODA loop is not so much a meticulous process as it is a recognition of how our minds operate. Through mindful management of that process, we can arrive at more considered decisions.
Each step of the OODA loop provides a new opportunity to interact with information as well as an opportunity for feedback.
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- Observe — At this phase, we are gathering information about the situation around us, a process often known as gaining situational awareness.
- Orient — This is the stage in which we reflect on what we are observing and apply our own lens to the situation based on how we are oriented to the information we have observed.
- Decide — Here we are considering potential outcomes based on possible action plans and then determining which one to pursue.
- Act — In the final phase, we act upon the decision we made and then observe the results, putting us back at the beginning of the loop.
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Although there is a lot more that can be said about each of these phases, that may be a discussion best left for another time. Instead, for our purposes here, it is sufficient to understand the phases at a base-level along with one more key understanding: Whoever executes the OODA loop the fastest and most completely is the likely winner. In other words, the faster you can arrive at your action steps having considered the most amount of information as completely as possible, the more likely you are to prevail over your opponent.
It is here where the connection to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) starts to emerge.
An AI-powered OODA loop
First, GenAI gives lawyers the ability to observe a greater amount of information. Based on the processing power of the GenAI tool being used and the data upon which it was trained, the right GenAI tool can vastly increase the amount of information available to a lawyer. Indeed, I have yet to meet the lawyer who would rather operate with less information.
Second, GenAI changes and augments the way lawyers orient to information, bringing in additional information to provide context to our observations and providing greater power for analysis and synthesis of the information observed. GenAI also helps lawyers remove their own personal blinders.
How we orient to information is as much a function of who we are as people — based on personal experiences, traditions, and training — as it is a function of what we actually observed. For illustration, let’s say two people are walking side-by-side down a street. One is a dog lover, the other recently had their car broken into. Both observe an individual gazing into a car window. The first person may wonder if a dog had been left in the car, while the second might be wondering if the person is looking into the car for anything of value. This orientation will impact the rest of their journey through the OODA loop.
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Clearly, GenAI also can come with its own orientation to information. However, properly constructed and vetted tools can augment decision-making capabilities by providing new perspectives. And these new perspectives will help at the decision stage. Recall that this phase is all about weighing the potential outcomes of various hypotheticals. In that sense, GenAI can help lawyers both with identifying potential outcomes as well as playing out the results of those scenarios.
And finally, once action is taken, AI tools can help speed the feedback process that re-engages the OODA loop.
Looking at GenAI through this framework, it becomes more understandable why many in the legal industry have taken the position that “GenAI will not replace lawyers, but the lawyer who uses GenAI will replace the lawyer that doesn’t.”
Speed is also a factor
Many lawyers have expressed wanting to take a wait and see approach to GenAI, opting for the lawyer’s favorite type of race, the race to be second. The reality of the OODA loop cautions against waiting too long, however.
Fighter pilots undergo extensive training to understand and harness the OODA loop to their advantage. They understand that the faster and more effectively they can go through that process, the more likely they are to survive. Lawyers would do well to learn the same lesson.
Lawyers who are early adopters of GenAI have already begun the process of speeding up their OODA loop, even if they didn’t know that was what they were doing. This is an advantage that will be hard for late-comers to surmount because early-adopters will simply have more practice and experience.
In the blockbuster movie Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise’s eponymous character is able to fend off vastly superior equipment using a jet that his counterpart aptly described as a museum piece. For Hollywood purposes, Maverick’s superior skill and experience enhanced his OODA loop to the point that his own personal skill was able to overcome a tremendous technological and competitive disadvantage.
However, the day-to-day practice of law is not a Hollywood movie.
Savvy lawyers who are at the top of their game always want every advantage available to them. These lawyers would do well to be mindful of their OODA loop and the advantages to may be gained by their ability to outcompete their adversaries.
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