How a Litigation Partner Scaled AI Adoption Across His Firm

CASE STUDY

Karl Daniel, Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak

Partner | Chair, AI and Technology Committee

Karl Daniel is a litigation partner at Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak, a mid-sized civil litigation firm in New York State, where he’s practiced for 7 years, handling  insurance, trucking and transportation, police misconduct, construction, and product liability cases. Karl also chairs the firm’s AI and Technology Committee and has been heavily involved in the rollout of SiftMed across the firm.

Adopting AI

Medical records are a vital part of the record review process at Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak. The decision to bring AI into the practice wasn't a reaction to a broken process, it was about enabling the team to work smarter and build fluency with AI tools reshaping the industry.

“There was nothing wrong with the way that we did things, but we asked ourselves, how could we adapt with technology and increase our productivity?”

For Karl, it was less about solving today's challenges and more about getting ahead of where the profession is headed. AI is becoming commonplace across the legal industry, and Karl saw adopting it as a way to give the legal team the support and resources to build familiarity early.

Choosing SiftMed

When the team at Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak went looking for a solution, the deciding factor wasn't a feature checklist. Karl explains, “The main thing for us was partnering with a program and a platform that understood our main objectives - the safety of confidential information, and the accuracy of the results.”

“AI is great, but if you're not using it responsibly, or you don't have the proper safety practices in place, there's tons of room for error.”

Karl applied that standard to the vendor relationship, not just the product. Karl was first introduced to SiftMed at a conference in Toronto, where he recalls feeling an immediate connection to the SiftMed team. He said working with SiftMed felt more personal, rather than transactional.

With the sensitive nature of medical records, safeguarding that data wasn’t negotiable. Knowing SiftMed had recognized security certifications gave Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak the confidence to move forward with the platform.

"The security and accuracy that we've been able to have with SiftMed, is a huge part of how we evaluate success with this program," he adds. Any AI tool needs mechanisms in place to guard against data risks, hallucinations, or summaries that get it wrong.

A Human-Centered Approach

The team at Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak are very forward thinking in their approach to leveraging AI. They recognize AI is a tool - it’s there to work alongside the people, not replace them. 

“There’s always going to be a human element that pairs with the use of any platform, we’ve shared that belief since day one - AI is here to support and enhance performance.”

That philosophy shows up in how Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak’s team reviews large cases, using SiftMed as a second set of eyes to catch details a person might miss buried in thousands of pages of records. “If you’re going to read thousands of  pages of medical records, the chance is higher that something could be missed.” Karl says, “We have a great team of paralegals assisting our attorneys with review of medical  records, utilizing SiftMed  allows our team to go the extra mile with confidence.” 

The same mindset carries across the rest of the firm. Leveraging SiftMed has created a sort of camaraderie around the office, Karl shares, “Walking around the office, people are excited, you see folks who are more experienced with SiftMed helping those who are just getting started. AI can be overwhelming and to see our team working together in this journey is truly special.”

The firm has been able to quickly scale with SiftMed. Users who had five or ten cases a couple of months ago, now have 35 or more, and Kenney Shelton Liptak Nowak is in the middle of a broader rollout - onboarding nearly 20 more attorneys to the platform. 

SiftMed has given paralegals and attorneys an opportunity to be more fluent with AI, and its user-friendly design has made adoption easier - while Karl also points to increased workplace morale as an unexpected measure through the process.

Confidence and the ability to scale didn’t happen on its own, it’s been supported by the team behind SiftMed. Karl’s pull to SiftMed was that it was a smaller, newer company with medical expertise at the leadership level, but what’s kept him here is the relationship. 

“SiftMed  trained our team from day one and continues to provide our team  the guidance we need to continue operating at a high level.” 

Karl didn’t anticipate that level of attention to hold as SiftMed grew, “I always knew SiftMed was going to grow, they’ve got a great mission, and the platform speaks for itself. But I didn’t imagine going into year two that we would have the same level of support.” Karl credits SiftMed’s team for staying responsive - training new attorneys, answering questions, and taking feedback to the product team.

The Impact

For Karl, the value of SiftMed isn’t only measured in hours or dollars saved. 

“The most valuable thing, in my opinion, is time. It’s a limited resource. When adopting a tool, we wanted to know we could provide the same level of service, if not better, for our clients, and our team.”

Karl estimates SiftMed has meaningfully cut down on review time, and it shows up directly for the firm’s clients - faster review means the firm can deliver concrete answers sooner. As Karl puts it, “If we can review cases at a faster pace, without sacrificing accuracy, it’s a huge advantage for our clients.”

That impact shows up for their team, too. Karl says the feedback from his paralegal team has been positive, SiftMed is saving them time and lets them take on more files or handle different cases. The firm’s attorneys have leaned into SiftMed’s dynamic reporting feature, using it to extract and summarize information; for example, pulling a surgical record into a clean, cited summary without juggling multiple systems.

“We’re using SiftMed to help fuel our growth and expansion. It’s easy to look at the numbers, or the hours saved, but there’s far more than that when we’re evaluating the success of SiftMed at our Firm.”

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