Just a year ago, we were talking about how technology has been disrupting the legal industry. I remember attending an international legal tech conference, where passionate legal tech professionals, from around the world, were sharing their view on how technology can improve the legal industry and what can be done better and how? The hot topics of the conference was organized around the open source and artificial intelligence concepts. The future seemed so far. At that time, at least to me, it felt like there were two generations talking about the possibility of meeting somewhere in the future.
Just a year later, the world seemed disrupted all together and at the same time. Today, everything and everyone seems to have felt behind and for the first time we've acknowledged that one cannot exist without the other. What good is to have technology if no one can benefit from it?
It is true that technology has become very handy during the pandemic. Some of us were able to work remotely or manage our businesses. Children were able to take online classes. Living a remote life became a new norm. But how do we feel about it?
I found it very exciting to observe how technology has been disrupting the legal industry little by little, but even more disrupted to see how it affected the ones that practice, teach and study the law.
We found it very useful to use technology in order to eliminate some of the repetitive tasks and in the end bring more efficiency in our day-to-day lives. But, how do we feel about being those high-cognitive professionals, like lawyers are, being replaced by AI? From a client perspective, efficiency always sounds good because there is always a cost interest. Clients want to pay for the experience and result, most of the time, rather than for the jobs that are usually delivered by the associates or support staff. Tools like LegalZoom and WeVorce seem to do a great job about giving the clients what they really want by guiding them through the things that need to get done, which reduces the cost of the legal services significantly. Many clients today are accessing tools like the ones mentioned above, but what do we know about lawyers being schooled in AI and what does that mean? Being a recent Law School graduate I can tell that nobody teaches you about AI or algorithms in Law School. So, if you didn't study about it on your own, there is a slight chance that you don't know much about it.
A lawyer schooled in AI would be able to access an AI tool that would allow her to scan and predict what documents will be relevant to a case, or so called e-discovery.
A lawyer schooled in AI would have more time to dedicate to her clients, write legal briefs, negotiate and appear in court instead. It is true that this would impact the lawyer's billable hours, especially for those working for the big law, but the result would be better lawyer-client relationships and client's satisfaction because in the end we are in the business of serving people.
Today, we find a decent amount of document review being outsourced to companies like Epique. Most of the time, these types of projects are being handled by non-licensed legal professionals. In the future, the law firm partner will become the leader of the team "and more than one of the players will be a machine", said Michael Mills a lawyer at Neota Logic.
So, algorithms are really great, and they seem to bring a new concept in the area of law practice - called efficiency and who does not like that? However, the machines need a bit of human touch and a lawyer schooled in AI will need to bring that to the table. They cannot do it alone!!!
It is true that AI presents a great threat to the "high-cognitive professionals", however, the lawyers that will thrive will be the ones who will reflect human traits like creativity and social intelligence. As AI will get smarter, these traits will become even more important.