LAW students (probably) don't need to worry about artificial intelligence getting clever enough to
replace human lawyers any time soon, but technology like AI is undoubtedly revolutionizing the legal profession.
The media is more interested in talking about whether we can
replace human lawyers with robots than in talking about what AI really means for law practice.
Not exact matches
As is the case with AI, the other major innovation of our age, we are still far away from a time where the technology is ready to completely
replace the complex and multi-faceted roles of the
human lawyer.
The platform to win the race will be the one that strips out most of the actual legal work (research, drafting, etc.) and
replaces it with technology, while empowering
human lawyers to focus on advising, guiding, and counseling their clients.
In case management, structured tasks such as billing and docketing have been automated, while unstructured tasks, such as monitoring junior
lawyers» work and dealing with parties who fail to honour contractual obligations «require unstructured
human interaction of a kind the computers can not
replace.»
Presenters in all sessions encouraged us to think of the «A» in AI to mean «Augmented» and not «Artificial,» suggesting that machines will partner with, rather than
replace,
human lawyers to perform intelligent tasks together.
As we discussed in our recent piece «Robot, Esq.: Four Reasons
Lawyers Shouldn't Fear AI and Automation Legal Tech», there are critical limitations on the ability of existing, non-general AI to
replace human beings in legal practice — including the truly bespoke nature of certain tasks, the lack of sufficiently relevant and tailored data sets to train algorithms to handle even semi-bespoke tasks (given the complex cocktail of idiosyncratic considerations that good legal counsel comprises), and the non-empirical or data - driven aspects of the practice of law — involving emotional intelligence, communication, and persuasion — which I believe are core to providing effective legal services.
Mr Price stresses that e-discovery does not imply
replacing lawyers as
human professional skills are still needed to review the results.
My junior
lawyer colleagues remind me that, for the present, there is a long way to go before AI, machine learning and other systems technology will
replace the warmth and comfort of
human interaction.
Plaintiff
lawyers need to
replace terms like: «pain and suffering» and «noneconomic damages» with terms like «
human losses.»
As such, I concluded that, while technology could
replace certain aspects of
lawyering, the legal advice and advocacy of a trusted advisor was a decidedly
human factor that was irreplaceable.
As machines become more intelligent it is inevitable that the machine will move up the legal vertical and do more
replacing of
human lawyers than supporting.
Technically, nothing even stops nations from
replacing central banks with algorithms (no,
lawyers will still be
human).
Likewise, legal structure — long dominated by the pyramidal, profit - per - partner (PPP) model — is being
replaced by a flat corporate structure where
lawyers are but one of many resources —
human and technological — deployed to solve business challenges that raise legal issues.