Case Closed... by Code 🖥️⚖️

Can AI replace lawyers?

December 21, 2023

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Will AI replace lawyers?

Today we'll delve into the capabilities of AI in interpreting legal documents as opposed to human attorneys or even judges. We'll examine the precision and efficacy of AI in legal interpretation, its potential advantages, and the implications for the legal profession. Here’s what you need to know:

  • 🧠 AI Might Need a Gavel Soon: Artificial intelligence is progressively stepping into the legal realm, with some AI programs demonstrating the ability to interpret legal texts with an accuracy that challenges even seasoned lawyers. Rather than replacing legal professionals, these AI systems are seen as tools to enhance their capabilities, enabling faster and potentially more consistent analysis of legislation, case law, and legal precedents. The race is on to refine these systems for practical, real-world application in various legal contexts.

    • For example: Legal analytics company Lex Machina employs AI to predict the outcomes of patent disputes, helping to navigate the thorny jungle of intellectual property law with data-driven insights.

  • ⚖️ Judges with Digital Robes?: Soon we may witness AI systems acting as decision support systems for judges and arbitrators, providing them with comprehensive legal analyses to aid in ruling on cases. Trained on vast amounts of legal documents, AI could offer insights drawn from wider pools of data than a human could reasonably process, potentially leading to more informed and equitable decisions. However, trust in such systems will be critical, as will be their ability to adapt to the complex and nuanced nature of law.

    • In academia: Stanford University has made a public commitment to a work-stream called “AI & Access to Justice”, researching how society can build smarter and more responsible AI for access to justice.

  • 🔮 Next-Gen Lawyers are Code-Savvy: As AI becomes more integrated into legal practices, the next generation of lawyers will likely need a strong understanding of not just law, but also the technology that can interpret it. This does not mean they'll all need to be programmers, but they will need to grasp how AI tools work and what the limitations are. Law schools might start including AI and data science as part of the core curriculum, preparing future lawyers for a tech-augmented legal landscape.

    • Prepping law firms of the future: The University of Toronto's Faculty of Law offers a Legal Innovation Zone which provides resources to integrate AI into the legal education, equipping students with firsthand experience of AI tools in practice.

  • 👨‍⚖️ Justice's New Best Friend or Foe?: While AI presents exciting opportunities for the legal field, caution is warranted. AI systems can only be as unbiased as the data they are trained on, and historic legal data is fraught with historical biases and inaccuracies. Additionally, the so-called "black box" problem in machine learning — where decisions are made without clear traceability — poses a significant challenge for systems that would offer legal interpretations, potentially leading to ethical and accountability issues.

    • Just look to the case of former presidential advisor Michael Cohen, who has recently come under fire for including citations to fabricated court cases that were actually AI hallucinations (or AI-created inaccuracies) in legal filings.

  • 📅 The Timeline for AI-Assisted Verdicts: It's not a matter of if, but when AI will be a common assistant in legal environments. Within the next decade, we should anticipate significant advancements in AI's ability to interpret and apply legal texts in real-world situations. However, the transition will be gradual, with continuous oversight and regulation to ensure that the technology supports justice rather than undermines it. Robotic judges pounding a digital gavel are still firmly in the realm of science fiction, at least for now.

    • Several years ago, computer scientists at University College London developed an AI-powered judge, which could help judges reach verdicts more efficiently. While it was successful in corroborating findings, systems like these are not yet being deployed autonomously.

What do the experts say?

“There remain quite a few unresolved issues with AI, such as confidentiality and security issues when ChatGPT stores the information you give it and uses it in other contexts.

The robots also tend to spout nonsense. They are unreliable and our history with self-driving cars shows that we allow a very low margin of error from machines.

Then there is the question of liability. Who is responsible when the robo-lawyer gives disastrous advice? When you buy a legal service, you also buy insurance. You want the guarantee that someone is accountable for the advice they give.”

— Niels Martin Brochner, from Will AI Replace Lawyers in Forbes

“The new A.I. is a challenge to the status quo. Higher productivity means fewer billable hours, yet hourly billing remains the dominant business model in legal work. A.I. should increase the pressure from corporate clients to pay law firms for work done rather than time spent. But top corporate legal officers — the customers — are typically former partners and associates in big law firms, steeped in the same traditions.”

— Steve Lohr, from A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again in The New York Times

“The use of AI in law has already arrived, and it is almost certainly here to stay. Overall, AI has the potential to make the practice of law more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective. However, law firms, companies, and individual clients should understand the limitations of AI and ensure that attorneys are transparent with clients about their use of AI. It also is important that practitioners have strict internal policies and guidelines in place when using AI in legal practice to ensure that AI-generated legal advice is used only under the supervision of licensed attorneys to supplement and not replace human legal expertise.”

— Christopher J. Edwab, Kevin V. Lam, Jacqueline Klosek, Steven J. Zhao, and Talea Stashin, from Will AI Replace Your Lawyer? What AI Means for the Legal Profession in Goodwin Law

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