Ian Lopez, Legaltech News
Sure you know AI, but do you know where it applies in, say, patents? Here’s where AI will continue to push legal technology this year.
Credit: Bannosuke/iStockphoto.com
You’ve likely read somewhere that 2017 will be a year for legal
technology.
While this sentiment and ones like it are often expressed at the
beginning of a new year, 2017 does in fact look ripe for transformative
disruption. This is in part due to the wide breadth of technologies that fall
under the umbrella of “artificial intelligence,” and the even wider breadth of
legal technologies to which AI can be applied.
Here are four
arenas in which AI is already and will continue advancing legal technology
capabilities.
1. Legal Research
This is the
area in which AI as a buzzword really took off in 2016. Part clever marketing
and part implications for legal services, AI as an emerging concept was
originally imprinted onto our minds by ROSS Intelligence, a legal research
platform built atop IBM’s famous Watson cognitive computing system. Starting
with a focus in bankruptcy law, ROSS Intelligence has since partnered with a
number of law firms ranging in size. The company is also currently working with
law firm partners on a knowledge management system.
AI as it
pertains to legal research works by basically automating a large fraction of
the grunt work that goes into conducting the research (e.g., finding the
documents, looking for relevant portions) and provides a user with the
documents they may be looking for in minutes. Further, by relying on machine
learning—a process by which a machine is able to learn and adapt its processes
based on human review of its work—there’s no need for having many researchers
on hand, which in theory could reduce legal services fees.
2. Contract Review
While
contract attorneys don’t yet have to worry about losing their jobs to a machine, contract
technology, while not yet able to handle the entire contract creation or
review, there are some interesting technologies automating much of the work
that revolves around contracts.
At present,
AI technology is able to scan contracts and decipher meaning behind the text,
as well as flag any discrepancies that might require a human set of eyes. This
technology can scan millions of documents in a fraction of the time it would
take humans (think hours as opposed to days or weeks). For those just beginning
a career as a contract attorney, this may also mean some change. As Ron Dolin,
senior research fellow at Harvard Law's Center on the Legal Profession and
former Google employee, told CNBC, "The first-year associate
as cash cow to partnership is breaking."
3. Internet of Things
By 2020, Gartner
estimates that there will be about 21 billion devices that are web enabled and
able to communicate with other devices. Known as the Internet of Things (IoT),
this mass of devices will generate data in a volume that we at present have no
way to surmount, meaning an array of challenges for e-discovery, data security,
data privacy, and investigations.
This may be
where machine learning comes in. Thomas Barnett, special counsel specializing
in e-discovery and data science at Paul Hastings, told Legaltech News, “The
future of our making sense of the almost incomprehensible amounts of data that
we’re bombarded with,” partially relies on machine learning.
He noted that
when building a case, a firm could use machine learning to scan a large data
set generated by IoT devices, with little knowledge as to what information
within is useful, then rapidly find desired information “without having to
spend thousands of hours of humans pouring over masses of irrelevant,
nonresponsive material.”
4. Patents
When it comes
to patents, AI may signal more challenges than benefits. Consider this
scenario: Enterprise cybersecurity technology built on machine learning
algorithm is scanning company technologies looking for security vulnerabilities
to fix. In doing so, it finds a problem and creates a solution. Now, if the
company wants to patent this new solution, there’s a problem—who owns the
technology? Can a machine patent a technology?
As AI has
carved a home for itself in legal technology in 2016, 2017 may be the year in
which the technology really takes off and begins changing the way law is
practiced. While the technology is not quite at a point to start replacing jobs
en masse, the rate of progress indicates that massive change may be underway in
the not-too-distant future.
No comments:
Post a Comment