By Tuan Minh Do
“Industry 4.0” is another name of the fourth industrial revolution that will change the way we work and enjoy our lives. It is predicted that the artificial intelligence (AI) might be more and more intelligent and it will gradually replace the high-skilled workers in the industry 4.0.
The Law Society of England and Wales defined: “The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ can be applied to computer systems which are intended to replicate human cognitive functions. In particular it includes ‘machine learning’, where algorithms detect patterns in data, and apply these new patterns to automate certain tasks.”[1]
AI has currently had two attributes for legal application, namely machine learning and natural language processing. Machine learning is the capability of computers to teach themselves and learn from experience.[2]Natural language processing is the capability of computers to understand the meaning of spoken or written human speech and to apply and integrate that understanding to perform human-like analysis.[3].
The legal automated machines have been capable of accessing to vastly increasing amounts of digitized data such as court cases, legal documents and pleadings, legal journals and research, legal websites, and a range of legal subject matters.[4]
Machine learning can save attorneys many hours of work and potentially save clients a substantial amount of money.[5]
Up to now, AI has been going so far as follows. Legal automated intelligence: Several technologies have been developed to do some tasks of lawyers. For example, ROSS Intelligence is built on IBM’s Watson intelligence to perform legal research. It can understand questions asked in natural language, analyses the questions, then goes through the body of law to provide specific, analytic answers.[6]
Some major U.S law firms have employed Ross for their work. “Everything in our line of work is about efficiency. There is zero doubt that ROSS gets my legal research done faster”, said Mitchell Nowack, a partner of Nowack & Olson.[7]
Legal document automation: The technologies can help us create legal documents raging from simplicity to complexity. In Australia, Law-path has developed a technology that is named “Lexi” to produce customized legal documents for clients. It is introduced: The information and documents are delivered through online interactive chat. The software combines machine learning and natural language processing principles to process user information that is filtered through rules and logical causal connections. The end result is a document that matches user queries.[9]
Legal prediction: In providing legal advice, lawyers frequently provide legal predictions. It takes a great amount of time for a lawyer to research legal database and facts to give an appropriate legal prediction. The automated legal analysis and prediction may save lawyers’ time. One of the first automated legal prediction programs is Lex Machina. Lex Machina was created by George Gregory and Joshua Walker and then purchased by Lexis in 2015. Lex Machina uses natural – language processing technology to the big data of legal information to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to win cases and close business.[11]
Automated Contract Drafting: AI has been challenging lawyers’ exclusivity in contract drafting as well. The machine learning algorithms have been developed to collect and process the contracts that are available in the public domain. The programs with the machine learning algorithms can learn the contractual language from those contracts and then classify contracts on the basis of the degree of standard. When a user enters his request and information, the machine learning algorithms will identify a requested contract, and then find a particular model form which is suitable for the user’s case. If there is no model contract satisfying the user’s request, the program can aggregate standard clauses from across multiple contracts to approximate a single standard document.[12]
In Australia, agtech company, AgriDigital is piloting of the world’s first wheat sale using a smart contract on a blockchain ledger.[13]
Through applied blockchain technologies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts, AgriDigital provides “real time payment to growers, increased efficiencies for brokers, flexible supply chain for buyers and financiers, and paddock to plate transparency for consumers”.[14]
In a 2015 Altman Weil survey of law firm managing partners, 47% said that, in the next five to ten years, they could envision a law-focused AI tool replacing paralegals, 35% could envision the replacement of first-year associates, and 19% could envision the replacement of second- and third-year associates.[15]
In my view, it is not necessary for all predictions to come true, however, robotic invasion in the legal profession is true. I had a nightmare in which robot lawyers ate all human lawyers’ jobs in my city. The robot lawyers transmitted a message, “stop hiring human lawyers to save your time and money at lower risks” to the public. Subsequently, my friend, a corporate lawyer was asked by his boss to quit his job because the boss wanted to replace him with the machine learning which could produce prompt legal answers and contract drafts without any request for overtime rate, vacation leaves, and other benefits. I also saw the robot lawyers representing clients in the courtrooms. Then, I saw a group of top lawyers sitting around a large oval table to discuss about what they would do to prevent the fall of human lawyers. And, I caught some amount of panic appearing on their faces and in their voices. I wanted to say something but my daughters woke me up by a song with the rhythms of spring.
Fortunately, what I dreamed was just a dream even it appeared far too pessimistic. AI capabilities cannot replace all human cognitive functions at this time and for the short term. The quality of language, gestures, and emotions contribute significantly to the success of the communication between lawyers and clients. Although tools like Cataphora can recognize sentiment in an email message, AI is not yet capable of understanding unscripted human interaction.[16]
In essence, either legal analytics or review, or both constitute part but not the entirety of legal advice. Because, a legal advice is not only a simple combination of data and facts but also a product of human sensibility. The degree of legal advice’s quality is substantially subjected to the experience and ability of a lawyer who designs the strategy and manages the performance of legal advice. For instance, robot is still incapable of identifying and working with pitfalls and traps in drafting and reviewing contracts. Further, in my opinion, robot can hardly produce schemes that would serve clients at best in the unpromising litigation and arbitration. I cannot image how a robot can respond to a surprised issue raised by the opponent during the close argument. That is why important legal skills based on human judgment, inference, common sense, interpersonal skills, and experience will remain valuable for the lifetime of any lawyer practicing today.[17]
Ultimately, the cognitive functions in control of a client’s case would be solely owned by human lawyers in five years or more.
Notwithstanding what you are thinking about the automation invasion in the legal profession, the adoption of AI in legal practice is gradual. Understanding and using technologies are a law firm’s major advantage over another one who lags in adopting technologies at this time.[18]
But, adopting technologies and changing the pattern of organization and operation are a compelling reason for a law firm’s existence in the near future. Regarding organization and operation of a law firm, deliberately designed, small and flexible teams will become the predominant approach toward fluctuating workloads, shrinking timeframes and intense flurries of information exchange and coordination.[19]
Athryn D. Betts and Kyle R. Jaep forecasted: “In fact, investing in cost-saving technology is likely to add value for clients, thus potentially further promoting a lawyer’s brand. Instead of the fall of the attorney, therefore, we might only see the fall of the billable hour, as tech-savvy attorneys are able to offer more value in less time.”[20]
In the era of robotic invasion, traditional skills would be not enough to build up a lawyer’s competency since drafting and reviewing can be automatically performed by robots. Law firms would no longer need lawyers for drafting but for being responsible for and control the quality of the work. Lawyers therefore need to equip themselves with a set of new skills comprising of e-discovery, cyber security, and management. Additionally, a lawyer must be able to jump in a wide range of projects at any point to satisfy the client’s diversified needs. Further, characteristics such as an entrepreneurial spirit, curiosity, creativity and strategic thinking skills could assume far more significance in the education and recruitment of future lawyers.[21]
We are now at the dawn of the industry 4.0, so we have enough time to prepare for the robotic invasion in the legal industry in 10 years or shorter or longer term. Do not ignore or resist the robotic invasion unless you want to be left behind. Instead, improve yourself for the brighter future.
- [1]The Law Society of England and Wales, Horizontal Scanning: Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession, May 2018, at 3, www.lawsociety.org.uk
- [2]Gary E. Marchant, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Legal Practice, The SciTech Lawyers, Fall 2017, at 21
- [3]Gary E. Marchant, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Legal Practice, The SciTech Lawyers, Fall 2017, at 21
- [4]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 21
- [5]Athryn D. Betts and Kyle R. Jaep, The Dawn of Fully Automated Contract Drafting: Machine Learning Breathes New Life into a Decades-old Promise, Duke Law & Technology Review, [Vol. 15 No.1], at 226
- [6]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 48
- [7]https://rossintelligence.com/ross/coverage/
- [8]The Law Society of England and Wales, Horizontal Scanning: Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession, May 2018, at 6, www.lawsociety.org.uk
- [9]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 39
- [10]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 45
- [11]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 50
- [12]Athryn D. Betts and Kyle R. Jaep, The Dawn of Fully Automated Contract Drafting: Machine Learning Breathes New Life into a Decades-old Promise, Duke Law & Technology Review, [Vol. 15 No.1], at 227
- [13]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 29
- [14]Judith Bennett, Tim Miller, Julian Webb, Rachelle Bosua, Adam Lodders, and Scott Chamberlain, Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools – Networked Society Institute Discussion Paper 1, The University of Melbourne, April 2018, at 52
- [15]Lisa Zhao, Artificial Intelligence and its Impacts on the Legal Profession, http://stlr.org/…/artificial-intelligence-and-its-impacts-…/
- [16]Lisa Zhao, Artificial Intelligence and its Impacts on the Legal Profession, http://stlr.org/…/artificial-intelligence-and-its-impacts-…/
- [17]Gary E. Marchant, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Legal Practice, The SciTech Lawyers, Fall 2017, at 21
- [18]Gary E. Marchant, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Legal Practice, The SciTech Lawyers, Fall 2017, at 21
- [19]The Law Society of England and Wales, Horizontal Scanning: Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession, May 2018, at 10, www.lawsociety.org.uk
- [20]Athryn D. Betts and Kyle R. Jaep, The Dawn of Fully Automated Contract Drafting: Machine Learning Breathes New Life into a Decades-old Promise, Duke Law & Technology Review, [Vol. 15 No.1], at 224
- [21]The Law Society of England and Wales, Horizontal Scanning: Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession, May 2018, at 10, www.lawsociety.org.uk