By Daniel Shin
As Artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more deeply integrated into our day to day life, many jobs doing simple and repeated tasks might quickly disappear. Advanced jobs that require professional knowledge or experiences may be also replaced by the adaptive deep learning machine and only the top human elite might survive.
Artificial intelligence may even eventually replace lawyers. It is yet hard to imagine how lawyers could be replaced by AI. Lawyers or judges are only as good as the information they receive. AI has the great potential to analyze the information it receives without human prejudice or personal favoritism.
AI can take a lot of repetitive tasks and quickly finish them with consistent quality and reasonable judgment. There wouldn't be any errors with human intervention. Error rates increase when human lawyers get tired or have their own schedules, but a machine wouldn't. All administration work in public offices, therefore, could benefit from AI.
AI could accelerate the processes of classifying documents and extracting any necessary data from those documents. In the areas of legal practice, AI could easily bolster tax practices first in order to get the best out of both the AI and law worlds.
For example, Blue J is a Toronto-based law tech startup developing an AI-powered legal prediction engine with a specific focus on tax, and labor and employment law. Its proprietary technology can predict case outcomes with over 90 percent accuracy.
In the near future, government agencies may also increasingly rely on digital automation powered by AI. Regulatory compliance could also witness AI's impact, which has started kicking in with automation but it is not in full measure yet.
AI is a fast-evolving strategic technology with tremendous opportunities, but no specific legal framework to regulate AI exists yet. The European University Institute (EUI) recently organized a special summer research colloquium on AI and law. It was a great privilege to become associated with the EUI, a research institute established in 1972 in Fiesole, Italy, by the EU member states.
The overall motivation of the EUI program was to stimulate the uptake of trustworthy AI in the legal domain. In theory, AI is supposed to be safe, lawful and also in line with fundamental human rights statutes. It was helpful to understand better a wide variety of logical methods that can be augmented to legal analyses of all kinds using a systematic method to assess legal arguments.
AI applications could pose specific and significant risks to the interpretation of various rules of law that are designed to protect fundamental human rights, ensure safety and attribute liability. Therefore, the development, deployment and use of AI should be subject to a range of laws and universal principles, such as on data protection and privacy, consumer protection, product safety, liability and so forth.
Some could argue that law is similar to coding, as in some ways, it consists of codified instructions determining dos and don'ts, ifs and thens. The rules of law are not as straightforward as computer programming, though, and AI cannot define what justice is all about.
AI could be more transformational than the mere automation of manual processes, which would eliminate many paralegal and legal research jobs in the future. AI could certainly accelerate the judicial processes and reduce transactional costs. It could make lawyers and judges focus more on the core issues and the human aspects of lawyering and resolve conflicts faster.
With $1 trillion in turnover globally, the legal services market is one of the largest in the professional services worlds and the stakes are high. Large corporations already use AI-powered contract review and compliance administration. AI could help legal practitioners make more informed decisions, but the final decision still belongs to the human domain. AI could help predict the outcomes of pending cases by letting a machine actively learn similar patterns of the relevant court proceedings.
It can be daunting to lawyers as they go through years of rigorous education and qualification exams to reach a point where they can easily understand legalese. AI lawbots (or lawyer bots) could assist in uploading legal documents and get simplified versions of complicated legal documents in minutes. It is not yet 100-percent comprehensive, but AI lawbots could help lawyers in the legal discovery phase without wasting time.
AI lawbots are smart at processing details, summarizing cases and looking up references. AI is not ready to make decisions yet on the cases, even if it can help predict the outcome. They mainly deal with drafting, contracting, reviewing and editing legal documents that will be immense with the onset of AI in law. AI lawbots could be trusted companions to lawyers, helping them reduce the manual effort required in legal proceedings. It could free up precious time for the practitioners to take on more important tasks, such as caring for their clients.
Conventionally, legal function has been viewed as an unavoidable cost center and largely overlooked by corporate clients. However, the legal field has seen lots of innovation in recent years. It represents a significant opportunity for value creation. ROSS, IBM Watson's AI lawyer or autom.io already supports law firms and their clients. Opportunities available to lawyers who use AI are abundant and can help lawyers equip themselves better before taking on a court case, in order to offer a priceless human touch to their clients. Current practitioners need not worry about AI taking over their jobs. Considering the size of the legal market, AI could help unlock new value, so it could be the right time to invite an AI legal counsel to be our next partner.
Daniel Shin is a venture capitalist and senior luxury fashion executive, overseeing corporate development at MCM, a German luxury brand. He also teaches at Korea University.
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Artificial intelligence may even eventually replace lawyers. It is yet hard to imagine how lawyers could be replaced by AI. Lawyers or judges are only as good as the information they receive. AI has the great potential to analyze the information it receives without human prejudice or personal favoritism.
AI can take a lot of repetitive tasks and quickly finish them with consistent quality and reasonable judgment. There wouldn't be any errors with human intervention. Error rates increase when human lawyers get tired or have their own schedules, but a machine wouldn't. All administration work in public offices, therefore, could benefit from AI.
AI could accelerate the processes of classifying documents and extracting any necessary data from those documents. In the areas of legal practice, AI could easily bolster tax practices first in order to get the best out of both the AI and law worlds.
For example, Blue J is a Toronto-based law tech startup developing an AI-powered legal prediction engine with a specific focus on tax, and labor and employment law. Its proprietary technology can predict case outcomes with over 90 percent accuracy.
In the near future, government agencies may also increasingly rely on digital automation powered by AI. Regulatory compliance could also witness AI's impact, which has started kicking in with automation but it is not in full measure yet.
AI is a fast-evolving strategic technology with tremendous opportunities, but no specific legal framework to regulate AI exists yet. The European University Institute (EUI) recently organized a special summer research colloquium on AI and law. It was a great privilege to become associated with the EUI, a research institute established in 1972 in Fiesole, Italy, by the EU member states.
The overall motivation of the EUI program was to stimulate the uptake of trustworthy AI in the legal domain. In theory, AI is supposed to be safe, lawful and also in line with fundamental human rights statutes. It was helpful to understand better a wide variety of logical methods that can be augmented to legal analyses of all kinds using a systematic method to assess legal arguments.
AI applications could pose specific and significant risks to the interpretation of various rules of law that are designed to protect fundamental human rights, ensure safety and attribute liability. Therefore, the development, deployment and use of AI should be subject to a range of laws and universal principles, such as on data protection and privacy, consumer protection, product safety, liability and so forth.
Some could argue that law is similar to coding, as in some ways, it consists of codified instructions determining dos and don'ts, ifs and thens. The rules of law are not as straightforward as computer programming, though, and AI cannot define what justice is all about.
AI could be more transformational than the mere automation of manual processes, which would eliminate many paralegal and legal research jobs in the future. AI could certainly accelerate the judicial processes and reduce transactional costs. It could make lawyers and judges focus more on the core issues and the human aspects of lawyering and resolve conflicts faster.
With $1 trillion in turnover globally, the legal services market is one of the largest in the professional services worlds and the stakes are high. Large corporations already use AI-powered contract review and compliance administration. AI could help legal practitioners make more informed decisions, but the final decision still belongs to the human domain. AI could help predict the outcomes of pending cases by letting a machine actively learn similar patterns of the relevant court proceedings.
It can be daunting to lawyers as they go through years of rigorous education and qualification exams to reach a point where they can easily understand legalese. AI lawbots (or lawyer bots) could assist in uploading legal documents and get simplified versions of complicated legal documents in minutes. It is not yet 100-percent comprehensive, but AI lawbots could help lawyers in the legal discovery phase without wasting time.
AI lawbots are smart at processing details, summarizing cases and looking up references. AI is not ready to make decisions yet on the cases, even if it can help predict the outcome. They mainly deal with drafting, contracting, reviewing and editing legal documents that will be immense with the onset of AI in law. AI lawbots could be trusted companions to lawyers, helping them reduce the manual effort required in legal proceedings. It could free up precious time for the practitioners to take on more important tasks, such as caring for their clients.
Conventionally, legal function has been viewed as an unavoidable cost center and largely overlooked by corporate clients. However, the legal field has seen lots of innovation in recent years. It represents a significant opportunity for value creation. ROSS, IBM Watson's AI lawyer or autom.io already supports law firms and their clients. Opportunities available to lawyers who use AI are abundant and can help lawyers equip themselves better before taking on a court case, in order to offer a priceless human touch to their clients. Current practitioners need not worry about AI taking over their jobs. Considering the size of the legal market, AI could help unlock new value, so it could be the right time to invite an AI legal counsel to be our next partner.
Daniel Shin is a venture capitalist and senior luxury fashion executive, overseeing corporate development at MCM, a German luxury brand. He also teaches at Korea University.
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