Ian Lopez, Legaltech News
In this edition of AI roundup, we
take a look at the ways artificial intelligence is being implemented in today's
legal departments.
The biggest
names in legal technology came together last week for the International Legal
Technology Association's (ILTA) annual conference, bringing with them insights
on the latest trends and technologies transforming the marketplace.
Paramount
among discussions, demonstrations and predictions was artificial intelligence
(AI), but the topic was not confined to the (near) future tense. Rather, as
indicated by titles of sessions like "Choosing the Right Artificial
Intelligence for the Job," AI's place in law is very much in the present.
As observed by
ILTACON-attendee Adi Elliott, vice
president of market planning at Epiq Systems, "Machine learning and
artificial intelligence were mentioned in virtually every session about the
future of legal technology. While predictive coding has been around for years,
these were by the far the most talked-about industry trends at ILTACON 2016.
Both were discussed primarily in the context of benefits, such as time gained,
cost transparency and efficiency."
As readers of this magazine can attest, machine
learning's benefits are becoming increasingly known and adopted in document
review, and riding this hype is Microsystems, which used ILTACON to both
announce a PDF cleanup feature (which converts PDFs to Word docs then uses
"artificial document intelligence" to identify and remove errors and
unnecessary coding) and the use of its Contract Companion tool at Drexel
University Thomas R. Kline School of Law for a course in contract drafting.
What Microsystems and the interest generated in the
programs signaled, however, was not so much innovation as the new norm in law.
As Microsystems CEO Stacey Kacek admitted, AI's use is
"still pretty limited," but nevertheless it's increasingly deployed
in many law firms around the
world.
In scaling back premonitions of a future where robots
rule courtrooms, Microsystems vice president of product development David Cook
noted at ILTACON that while some view AI as replacing people, the idea is
better broken down to a simple idea: let the computers do what they do well and
let people do what they do well. As an example, he noted that while people are
bad at repetitive tasks, computers are bad at advocacy.
While the industry begins finding comfortable footing
with AI's presence in the workflow, those that have been anticipating
inevitable change used ILTACON as a grounds to balance predictions made by
renowned legal technology scholar Richard Susskind over 20 years ago with the
state of law today.
In the session "Grading Susskind: The State of
Legal 20 Years After the 'Future of Law,'" the panel discussed how the legal industry's collective resistance to technology
has at times held it back from technological progress already making strides in
other industries, such as medical and financial. According to panelist Susan
Hackett, CEO of Legal Executive Leadership, "what holds [legal] back is
behavioral," and while change is already underway, legal professionals
"can't accept it."
Problematic to law is the notion of perfection, she
added, as in the lawyer's mind, for something to be valid, "everything has
to be 100 percent" accurate. This, however, contradicts expectations of
most businesses, and law firms are increasingly being called upon to operate as
such.
"Lawyers have become part of a much larger team
of service providers and people that are not playing a formal legal role,"
Hackett said, listing those with technology, financial and data expertise as
part of this new workforce.
Yet when weighing law's adoption of technology against
the actual capabilities of technologies across other verticals, Gilbert + Tobin
chief operating officer Sam Nickless noted that while "you give Susskind
an A for predictions," the legal industry has fallen far behind. However,
he added that while law is struggling to keep up with change in other
industries, greater change will likely be underway in the next five years,
shifting legal technology from sustaining to transformative.
Outside
of the Bubble, the World Takes Note
Legal technology is often criticized as being insular, followed
regularly by a devoted set of hobbyists that don't represent the state of the
legal industry. While there's much room to bring new firms and practitioners
into the fold, the world beyond law itself is taking note of AI's impacts on
the industry.
In a Forbes article
discussing how AI is set to transform legal services, author Mark Cohen notes
that at present, "technology has already produced a new class of support
professionals that work with lawyers," allowing lawyers the time to
"interpret data, render professional judgement, and perform functions that
require professional training."
As for machine learning's role in the mix, Cohen
writes that given changes fueled by tech advances, globalization and the
financial crisis, "it's no surprise that AI is rapidly becoming a staple
in the delivery of legal services." At present, he notes that AI, not
labor arbitrage, is being viewed as "the engine for a 'better, faster,
cheaper' delivery of certain legal services":
"AI's impact on the corporate end of the legal
market is in its incipient stage, but its impact on efficiency, risk
mitigation, and dramatically shortening the time and reducing the cost of human
review is significant."
Forbes isn't novel in realizing AI's
implications. For example, the Huffington Post noted this week that "new lawyer
are having a hard time finding jobs upon graduation from law school" while
"established lawyers are facing threats to their way of doing business by
technology-enabled companies."
Similarly, ZDNet recently spoke with Morgan Lewis CIO
Michael Shea about how his law firm is using AI to respond to client demand.
Additionally, international law firm Reed Smith tested RAVN Systems technology
in interpreting and extracting key provisions from client leases. As The Law
Society Gazette reported, "the firm will definitely be using [the
technology] again."
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