Future of the Practice – Part 5: Impact of Technology Like Watson Might Not Be So Elementary

Imagine  attorneys had an assistant that could structure data, help firms maintain transparency through more accurate information, keep track of complex legal and regulatory issues, improve efficiency so firms can scale up their services, and help lawyers handle various forms of “disruptive” competition, without breaking a sweat?

Some believe that technology like IBM’s Watson will help provide such assistance, providing lawyers with the “permission” to think innovatively, help clarify what attorneys do day-to-day—without replacing them—bring about better organization of data, and in doing so be of particular benefit to tech-savvy younger lawyers.

Machine learning might have more of a disruptive impact on lawyers than other technologies because it’s closer to the core of what lawyers do than earlier advances like word processing, e-mail and the Internet. But will technology like Watson impact their core work, or just the way client data and legal work product are created and disseminated?

IBM describes Watson, with its ability to handle even clumsily stated “natural language” questions, as part of a next generation of computing that not only answers humans’ questions but provides insights they might not have considered in the first place, mirroring the human cognitive process of Observe, Interpret, Evaluate and Decide.

This helps law firms keep track of how their information is aggregated and disseminated, providing for additional transparency that can be useful to litigators or investigators. Such systems can be used to track and integrate legal and business rules. They can help understand a client’s complexity and give attorneys tools to help their legal work stay apace. And Watson-like systems can help them scale up and improve efficiency and work processes.

Watson can help lawyers think outside the box of what they do, but to gain efficiencies from this new paradigm they will need to rigorously reexamine the structure of legal knowledge, currently contained as it is in a byzantine network of statutes, regulations, how-to guides, policies, contracts and case law.

Legal reasoning always will be too informal to be validated by a computational system, but Watson will help throw into relief just how and when lawyers add value to a given set of circumstances, empower the types of younger lawyers at the bottom of the totem pole who embrace emerging technology, and help firms better manage data and information. Watson is likely to become a standard query model for professional knowledge, as Google is for web search.

Given that IBM has introduced Watson to the market as a service, with an open model of innovation that is likely to prompt different types of companies to use Watson in different ways, this is likely to create a wave of experimentation. This may prompt attorneys and law firms, perhaps somewhat uncharacteristically, to become early adopters of a new technology.

Although machine learning will have its tradeoffs like anything else, it could have profoundly positive consequences for the legal profession in helping it catch up with other fields in improving productivity, responding to complexity and becoming more transparent. But never fear, Watson will not take over our profession.

The Future of Law – Part 4: Our Robot Colleagues

Call it the rise of the robots.  The legal profession continues to be transformed by the use of artificial intelligence in new and innovative ways. New developments in the past five years alone stagger the mind as what would have sounded like science fiction not along ago continues to become reality, making the lives of lawyers easier but also forcing them to change how they do business if they want to survive and succeed.

Rewind to 2013, and you find Jay Leib and Dan Roth—who launched Discovery Cracker way back in 2000 to streamline discovery and make it electronic and searchable—birthing their then-new creation, NexLP.  For the past five years this company has used AI to analyze previously unstructured data and identify trends, using predictive coding to gauge, for example, the likely results of pending litigation based on past results.

Another entrepreneurial duo, Adam Nguyen and Ned Gannon, set into motion the Diligence Accelerator program from eBrevia to help lawyers handle the pressure from in-house counsel and other clients to cut costs. This AI-fueled software similarly extracts information from data as clients upload documents, search for information and download per their preferences. The program doesn’t just recognize words but notices common legal phrases and stores those in its “memory bank” for future use.

In 2015, Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, created an independent subsidiary called NextLaw Labs, which earned the firm distinction from The Financial Times as the most forward-thinking law firm of the year. The subsidiary’s advisory group picks through potentially disruptive ideas to find those most likely to succeed, among which has been Ross Intelligence, which uses IBM’s Watson cognitive computing to make reams of legal research instantly searchable via a request in plain English.

Another innovative law firm, Riverview Law in the United Kingdom, launched a virtual assistant called “Kim,” an acronym for knowledge, intelligence and meaning, which will use AI technology developed by the University of Liverpool and a U.S.-based data collection and management program called Clixlex, since renamed Kim Technologies.

And the U.K.-based Ravn Systems has used cognitive computing to build its Applied Cognitive Engine program, which also extracts information from data at high speed, pushing out the boundaries of what lawyers and law firms can accomplish in a short stretch of time. The company’s Contract Robot can do so with title deeds and other types of documents.

AI continues to blossom, and while many firms do not yet use it, the robots are clearly on the march. “You start with a number of documents and ask questions like what are the termination clauses,” Peter Wallqvist, CEO and co-founder of Ravn Systems, explained to the ABA Journal. “For example, there’s a telecommunications company that would tell us about documents they had to review. They told us how they had to go through 1,000 documents, which would take three people six months to complete. We can do that in a matter of days.”

As the Journal concluded, “That is the future. Maybe it’s not so scary after all.”

 

Future of the Law – Part 3: Meet LISA, the future of Law.

The term “Legal Intelligence Support Assistant” might sound like a fancy-pants way of referring to your paralegal, law library or perhaps secretary. When you shrink that term to the acronym LISA, you might be tempted to ask about LISA’s professional background or whether she’s a nice woman.

But this LISA is no woman, let alone a human.  “She” is an artificial intelligence solution who provides “expertise” in the automation of legal documents, reducing or replacing the need for human lawyers in representing either party to an agreement.    The National Law Journal sounded impressed with LISA, placing the technological innovation on its inaugural list of Legal AI Leaders, which highlighted 49 entrepreneurs and companies who the magazine believes represented the best available online AI tools and services.

Launched in April 2017, Robot Lawyer LISA has been used by students, academics, businesses of all varieties and sizes, general counsel and other legal users. The U.K.-based company and co-founder/CEO Chrissie Lightfoot have become part of the conversation about the future of legal services provision, particularly in the area of quality online legal advice and documents.

“I’ve always been driven to innovate and push the boundaries to make improvements related to new products and/or services with the focus on the customer or client at the center of everything,” Lightfoot told the online publication Womanthology. “No doubt this passion has been fueled by my interest in the future as I constantly question, “What’s next?”, “What’s possible?”, and “How are we going to get there?”

Based on the premise that 90 percent of the public cannot afford legal services, LISA brings together human and machine intelligence to enable to lay parties to put together a legally binding contract, making quality legal insight, guidance, support and advice both faster, more transparent, more affordable and more accessible—24/7/365 and around the world.    The LISA system first offered a non-disclosure/confidentiality agreement, and the company subsequently released a group of three property-related artificial intelligence tools: a commercial lease, a residential lease, and a lodger agreement. These have come in handy for everyone from professional service firms, to business associations, to property-related businesses as the letting or renting of property online continues to grow, Lightfoot says.

The AI system asks users a number of questions supported by information, know-how and experience from human lawyers who helped to create LISA. Users read and respond, and those answers lead the parties to a middle ground as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, while helping them navigate the nuances involved both legally and commercially, she says.

For example, a landlord might initiate a lease document using the LISA tool, and then the tenant can change the initial draft to make the lease 18 months instead of three years—or anything else two laypeople traditionally would negotiate, albeit traditionally with the help of two human lawyers. Instead, they get support, knowledge and intelligence from the system.

Ultimately, Lightfoot does not think AI will mean robots take over every task an attorney might handle. “AI and robots will continue to replace human jobs whilst augmenting others,” she told Womanthology. “If you do nothing, then you ought to be worried. However, as these human roles and skill-sets will variably shift, it is up to each and every one of us to reinvent ourselves and apply the skills that the machines cannot do, yet.”

 

Michigan Bar Considers Ethics Resolution for Online Matching Services

Potential legal clients are increasingly turning to online matching services to find attorneys. In some cases, these services charge a fee based on a percentage of the attorney’s costs for their legal help, and the money is paid to and controlled by the third party.

A Michigan state bar committee is considering a resolution asserting that such fees constitute an impermissible sharing of fees with a non-lawyer, violating numerous ethical rules in the state codified in the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct. Attorneys in other states, many of which have similar rules, would do well to be aware of the issues raised.

The Michigan ethical rules in question include provisions that prohibit a lawyer from participating in for-profit lawyer referral services, sharing fees with a non-lawyer or giving anything of value to recommend a lawyer’s services—aside from reasonable advertising fees, charges for a nonprofit lawyer referral service, or sale of a law practice.

Connecting to clients through such online matching services also would “subvert” compliance with another ethical rule that requires legal fees and expenses paid in advance be deposited into a client trust account until the fee is earned and expenses incurred, the resolution notes. It adds that this also “impedes” compliance with the requirement that unearned prepaid fees and unexpected advances on costs be refunded.

To whatever extent such an online service provider identifies itself as providing legal services, attorneys that partner with the online service assist in the unauthorized practice of law, the resolution states. Finally, to the extent the matching service provides administrative “back office” services usually done through a law firm, “this does not comport with the professional obligations of the lawyer.”

“The assessment requires a careful review of the business model to determine whether it constitutes a for-profit referral service and if compliance with the terms for participation requires a Michigan lawyer to violate the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct,” the resolution reads. “Legal matching services are not new, but innovation in technology has spearheaded private entrepreneurial online matching services beyond the usual bar association non-profit lawyer referral services.”

The resolution considers two scenarios. In one case, a national website includes “legal services” in its business name, markets to consumers, brands participating lawyers with the business name, offers services for a fixed fee, asks the consumer to choose an attorney based on a review of profiles, and requires the consumer to pay a deposit into the website portal. The site markets to lawyers that it matches them with clients who already have paid, takes care of all administrative services, and deducts a percentage as a “marketing fee.”

The second scenario has the word “legal” in its name, targets businesses needing legal services, tasks them to fill out an attorney request form, provides a free half-hour consultations followed by a pricing proposal from the attorney, then asks the business client to pay through the website. The third party then collects and holds all fees and keeps about 7.5 percent of each. Lawyers must provide at least a 17.5 percent discount off their standard rates, and the service touts discounts of 60 percent to 75 percent because it offers administrative services normally handled by a law firm.

“Numerous ethical concerns are presented by both business models,” the proposed Michigan bar resolution concludes. “Although these online matching services do not call themselves lawyer referral services, the functional characteristics of a referral service are embedded in both business models.”

 

 

Will Robots take over the Practice of Law?

Robots in the Practice of Law?

Nearly half of all jobs in the United States could be performed by robot employees within the next two decades, according to report by PwC, with the effects varying by industry and job category.  Artificial intelligence provides a rapid way to analyze data and identify trends, but AI currently offers little of the creative thinking or originality required in most areas of the law.

The use of AI in the law dates to 1999, when Jay Leib and Dan Roth created “Discovery Cracker,” a tool that helped lawyers manage electronic documents for litigation in an age when they increasingly were sifting through terabytes of data instead of mountains of paper. The pair later in 2013 created NexLP, which uses predictive coding—in which a computer searches documents for conceptual information (not just keyboards) to determine which ones are and are not useful to a case—to substantially reduce the time necessary for e-discovery.

Today, computers are processing information at about 10 times faster than the human brain and it is only a matter of time before computers are programmed to assess all of the other factors that go into a legal analysis.

Artificial intelligence in the legal realm has taken another step forward with the advent of IBM’s “ROSS,” touted as “the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney,” blending the voice technology of Apple’s Siri with the cognitive computer of its IBM sibling, Watson. ROSS can perform the preliminary document research needed for some cases in as little as 30 seconds.

“You ask your questions in plain English, as you would a colleague, and ROSS then reads through the entire body of law and returns a cited answer and topical readings for legislation, case law and secondary sources to get you up-to-speed quickly,” according to the website of Baker and Hostetler, which recently announced that ROSS has been “hired” to work alongside its 50 bankruptcy attorneys.

This has a number of both promising and cautionary implications for law firms and their small business clients:

  • Nearly 80 percent of Americans who currently need a lawyer cannot afford one, despite the massive number of attorneys in the U.S., but using ROSS should be able to lower costs since there will not be humans who bill hourly handling some preliminary research for cases and matters.
  • Attorneys who are currently out of work or under-employed could use AI to create a lower barrier of entry into the market by being able to offer more affordable options to their clients.
  • For now, ROSS is available only for bankruptcy and intellectual property law, and the price may be prohibitive for smaller to midsized firms.
  • The volume of work performed by AI could lead to job loss for some attorneys.
  • ROSS could level the playing field between firms of different sizes because it won’t matter as much whether a firm has one or 30 associates available to research a case.
  • Instead of leafing through dusty textbooks or clicking on hundreds of links looking for precedent or an obscure court ruling, human attorneys will be freed to focus specifically on a client’s needs and creative solutions to them as AI handles the grunt work.
  • ROSS keeps updating court rulings so that as a case is being worked on, attorneys will know about up-to-the-minute developments in the relevant area of law.
  • The technology not only narrows down results to the most relevant answers, but it translates those answers from legalese into something closer to plain English, making them more understandable for clients.

Given that artificial intelligence cannot at the present moment compete with humans in terms of creative thinking or originality, the effectiveness of a technology like ROSS in simply taking over an entire section of a law firm remains doubtful for now.

“We believe that emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help enhance the services we deliver to our clients,” says the Chief Information Officer of the firm employing ROSS in its bankruptcy practice. “We have been using ROSS since the first days of its deployment, and we are proud to partner with a true leader in the industry as we continue to develop additional AI legal assistants.”

Artificial intelligence will continue to move forward in the legal world, although further implications going into the future remain unclear—including the impacts of robots on revelry and merriment at office holiday parties.

How should we plan to network or go to a Cubs game with ROSS?  Will ROSS ask to attend our office parties?