Author: Bushra Asif
Legal Manager and Legal Trainer
The legal profession has long been regarded as resistant to change and driven by tradition rather than innovation. However, COVID forcefully steered this field into adopting technology which showed some amazing results – and now there’s no going back! AI is disrupting the legal field with its pervasive presence – and it is for the better. As the science fiction writer William Gibson memorably said, ‘the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed’.
Make some room Lawyers, AI is here to stay
Since the dawn of technology many professions have adopted technology successfully and quite a number of jobs were eliminated, albeit invariably menial ones that did not require high skills. However, now that machine learning algorithms are becoming more sophisticated, even highly educated positions could be replaced by automation.
Like it or not but its next target is to devour the legal industry.
Machines have proven to triumph over man – who can forget the Deep Blue, an IBM computer, which easily beat the invincible Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. Recently an experiment was carried out by LawGeex, an AI powered legal platform, in which its machine-learning AI was pitted against top tiered 20 human lawyers to see how
it would fare going over contract law. Each lawyer and the LawGeex AI were given five nondisclosure agreements to review for risks. The humans were given four hours to study the contracts. Results were spellbinding: the lawyers took an average of 92 minutes to complete the task and achieved a mean accuracy level of 85 percent. LawGeex AI took only 26 seconds to review all five contracts and was 94-percent accurate.
So, should we deduce and fear that AI will eventually take over our jobs – hmm, not exactly! Like in any other sector, it is being implemented to make things more efficient and streamlined. And the truth of the matter is that there are many lawyers and paralegals who study mundane contracts all day, every day. Computer algorithms could replace these common positions. And so, these displaced legal workers can be utilized in more challenging areas.
As Professor Richard Suskind, a pioneer in the field of information technology and law, writes in his book ‘The future of Professions’:
“Our main claim is that we are on the brink of a period of fundamental and irreversible change in the way that the expertise of these specialists is made available in society. Technology will be the main driver of this change. And, in the long run, we will neither need, nor want professionals to work in the way that they did in the twentieth century and before”.
DOES THAT MEAN THE DEATH OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION IS IMMINENT AND WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF LAW?
According to Dan Hunter (Executive Dean, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology), there are main five large-scale changes that have happened or are happening to the legal profession:
1. How technology solutions have moved law from a wholly bespoke service to one that resembles an off-the-shelf commodity;
2. How globalisation and outsourcing upend traditional expectations that legal work is performed where the legal need is, and shifts production away from high cost centres to low cost centres;
3. How managed legal service providers – who are low cost, technology-enabled, and process-driven – threaten traditional commercial practice;
4. How technology platforms will diminish the significance of the law firm; and
5. How artificial intelligence and machine learning systems will take over a significant portion of lawyers’ work.
There is a revolution brewing in which the legal needs will be met by entities such as technology companies delivering document generation systems and artificially-intelligent legal support systems, to multidisciplinary practices providing a combination of professional services that defy conventions.
Initially the AI researchers undertook to study Law as one of the first domains, because it has so many clearly defined rules in so many different areas. However, for many years, work in AI and law was restricted to research labs; but the recent combination of simple to use rule-based technologies and a steady flow of venture capital money has led to an explosion of legal technology companies which can deliver low cost, commoditised services for certain types of legal needs.
Legaltech providers like LegalZoom, LawGeex, Nolo, Juro, Rocket Lawyer, and LegalVision have emerged to offer fast, cheap, and accurate legal services in areas where the law is routine and where there are lots of potential consumers: think property transactions, will drafting and probate matters, family law and common commercial contracts.
Of course, larger firms will adopt it more easily due to deep pockets, which will over time increase their productivity and efficiency through legaltech automation – meaning that they will need to hire fewer lawyers to service the same clients.
SO WHAT ARE THE REALITIES OF INNOVATIVE LAW FIRMS?
Legal Tech, or Legal Technology, is a single or set of technological solutions for law firms, lawyers, businesses, and organizations, built to simplify, optimize, and automate their operations.
“As computational technology and artificial intelligence matures, more people will be able to have better access to justice.”- Monica Bay, Fellow, Stanford Law School CodeX.
AI-powered solutions can speed up the contract review process by 90% without any compromise on accuracy as compared with a manual review.
Artificial intelligence companies continue to find ways of developing technology that will manage laborious tasks in different industries for better speed and accuracy. In the legal profession, AI has already found its way into supporting lawyers and clients alike, by offering:
· Due diligence – Litigators perform due diligence with the help of AI tools to uncover background information. Also helps with contract review, legal research and electronic discovery.
· Prediction technology – An AI software generates results that forecast litigation outcome.
· Legal analytics – Lawyers can use data points from past case law, win/loss rates and a judge’s history to be used for trends and patterns.
· Document automation – Law firms use software templates to create filled out documents based on data input.
· Intellectual property – AI tools guide lawyers in analyzing large IP portfolios and drawing insights from the content.
· Electronic billing – Lawyers’ billable hours are computed automatically.
DIFFERENCE CREATED:
The first difference it has made is in the way that technology solutions have moved law from a wholly bespoke service – think of a handmade suit, or pair of shoes – to one that resembles an off-the-shelf commodity, like a jacket created on a production line. The second is in globalisation and outsourcing, which has created possibility that legal work is performed where the legal need is, and shifts production away from high cost centres to low cost ones. The third is in the rise of managed services, which involves a shift in corporate legal departments from purchasing costly customised advice from law firms, to using lower cost, technology-enabled and process-driven providers for significant parts of their legal needs.
The meteoric rise in legaltech investments in the last 18 months reminds me of another vertical that disrupted the incumbents and reeled in billions of private capital dollars — fintech.
By now, we all know the story of fintech and its coming of age during the 2008 financial crisis. Fintech unbundled services, distributed access, lowered fees and created digital-first experiences that easily disrupted the behemoth, risk-averse banks that people thought would never change. Individuals and businesses adopted fintech like wildfire, with investment reaching $130 billion in 2020.
Legaltech, which technically began 10 years ago, is similarly positioned at the beginning of an unbundling cycle driven by COVID-19. The pandemic has driven a shift to remote work, increased the need for digitization, and revealed the expense of delayed adoption in this insular analog industry.
This wave of digital transformation will impact how, where and when law is practiced both today and in the long term.
Yet we cannot ignore that despite major advances, legaltech still faces obstacles that fintech didn’t. There’s a misconception that the legal industry is hyper-traditional, too risk averse, and that there’s less demand for technological innovation due to smaller market size.
In this new world, stagnant monolithic law firms will need to flex their multidisciplinary muscle and show their ability to adapt. They will be forced to innovate at the hands of disruption.
As the digital transformation of the legal industry continues to accelerate, supply will rise with demand; as will revenue. And amid the vast SaaS landscape, sophisticated investors can be sure there’s a “PayPal of legaltech” on the horizon.
A tech savvy lawyer will often be more valuable to the law firm of the future than the quintessential lawyer.
The retail segment of the legal industry is witnessing a surge in ‘disruptive technology’. What this means is simply that changes are predominantly occurring in the lower end of the market, whereby technology and innovation allow entry of new clients in the marketplace by creating ease of access to legal services at lower costs and higher efficiency.
Now the best part – we are soon going to be introducing a law firm of the future, with the finest of minds behind it, which will provide its clients with access to technology platforms enabling them to continuously monitor progress and receive regular updates on their matters. The work will be more efficient, cost-effective and done with better ease.
