Most lawyers regard their work as highly individualised and geared towards handcrafting specialised, unique and humanistic solutions.
But in a world where advanced technology like Artificial Intelligence is making its presence felt, is it not time to move past “lawyer exceptional ism as justification for its guild-like operation” (Mark A. Cohen, CEO of Legal Mosaic, writing for Forbes)?
AI and legal technology are already ‘intruding’ into the sacred hallways and courtrooms of law as these two examples show:
- Predictive litigation AI is now used to analyse past legal data and present insights into possible future outcomes
- An app created at Stanford University (DoNotPay) offers AI-powered legal advice that can be used to “sue anyone by pressing a button”
A massive increase in legal tech companies utilising AI and machine learning, indicates that there is a huge appetite for legal process automation so lawyers can devote more time to other strategic tasks that actually require the human touch.
Therefore, although legal knowledge is still indispensable to a lawyer’s professional arsenal, it is no longer enough for him to restrict himself to his ‘artisanal’ skills. The unstoppable growth of legal tech shows that the time is now ripe for lawyers to “rethink unbounded” and stop treating tech as the enemy. The new lawyer needs to be less of a legal technician and more of an out-of-the-box thinker who uses legal tech, embraces the new changing realities and develops new skills. Only then can he call himself a true lawyer-magician.
For this post, we would like to thank Lawgeex.com and their article Can Tech Really Ever Replace Lawyer Magic, published on their site on 10th January 2019.
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