A Strategic Playbook for Mastering Evidence Early in Complex Disputes

When complex disputes unfold in the public eye, the margin for error narrows quickly. Add cross-border dynamics, time pressures and third-party scrutiny, and legal teams face a uniquely demanding set of challenges.

Consider a scenario where a breach of contract between two high-profile companies leads to litigation across multiple jurisdictions. In this kind of matter, the legal team would be under pressure to quickly establish an understanding of the facts and control over the relevant data. In high profile cases like these, mastering evidence early on is critical, though often challenging. This article outlines how legal teams can use technology, including AI, to navigate complex data and quickly develop a proactive case strategy.

Pause and think on the offensive on day zero

The instinct in high-pressure moments is often to react defensively. But strategically, the first move should be to step back and look at all angles. Consider not just how to defend, but also how to assert a position. 

Key questions to ask on day zero include:

1. What do any relevant contracts say about jurisdiction and dispute resolution (litigation or arbitration)?
2. What judgments or awards may be enforced according to regulation and legal statutes, particularly in cross-border scenarios?
3. Does the matter involve a contractual breach, negligence, both or some other violation?
4. What evidence exists about service delivery, problem awareness and damages?

Understanding who knew what, and when, may start with a rapid review of a wide-ranging and complex dataset. Humans must lead and provide the critical thinking for case strategy, but AI can help.

Triaging data by preserving, classifying and prioritising

Early data triage is foundational. At this stage, the focus isn’t full-scale document review. Instead, it’s about quickly identifying where the critical data lives and making informed judgments about relevance, privilege and preservation. This may include source code, contracts, internal emails, meeting notes, third-party agreements and more.

Using AI to investigate

Organisations are increasingly open to using AI to accelerate discovery and document review. In a contract dispute, a targeted line of inquiry could be whether a partner’s documentation overstated capabilities. Rather than reviewing 100,000 documents manually, AI could be applied to classify these documents into two categories: those that made certain relevant claims and those that didn’t.

To do so, detailed prompts can be constructed and tailored to the legal and factual context and the AI model can be instructed to take on the persona of a litigator following a review protocol. Prompts could include step-by-step instructions to tailor the model to the needs and strict guardrails to minimise hallucinations or errors by the model. AI tools can also be instructed to show their work by quoting documents, explaining logic and justifying classifications, which supports downstream quality control.

With the right human oversight and protocols, this process can yield a curated set of documents that include capability claims, along with  an extracted list of those claims mapped to specific documents and inconsistencies throughout. This information, surfaced quickly, can then proceed for further human review and analysis.

AI literacy and oversight are non-negotiable

As always, while AI can dramatically accelerate early case assessment, it's not a replacement for expert legal judgment. To ensure reliability, prompts and workflows must be tested across diverse datasets and calibrated for accuracy. Users need clear training on how to supervise AI outputs, interpret its reasoning and course-correct when things go off track.

Increasingly, in complex, contentious and high profile litigation, AI can play an important role as part of the litigation toolkit. When applied thoughtfully, AI can help legal and client teams master the evidence faster and with greater insight that previously possible.

By Jon Chan, Senior Managing Director, FTI Technology and Tom Whittaker, Director, Burges Salmon.  FTI and Burges Salmon hosted an event on the topic of mastering evidence in complex disputes with AI as part of London International Disputes Week 2025.