Opinion: Will the legal industry fall prey to AI?

This piece by Inspire Law discusses the impacts of AI on the legal industry

Over the past decade, the woes and fears of artificial intelligence (AI) potentially displacing humans in their jobs have been growing in scale and intensity. The legal industry is unequivocally one of the sectors that will be significantly impacted by the continuous development of AI in the world, and it is vital that the benefits and drawbacks of the impact are analysed as we move into a future shrouded with uncertainty.

To start off, I would like to discuss what I feel are two of the most groundbreaking projects in the AI space, at the forefront of cementing AI into the fabric of the legal industry and into society as a whole. The first is a sui generis advanced chatbot service that has been developed by OpenAI, named ‘ChatGPT’ or GPT-3 which was made available to the public on 30th November 2022. Amassing a million users after just 5 days, ChatGPT has brought to this world something we have never seen or used before. In contrast, Facebook took 8 months, and Tiktok took 2 years, with Instagram also taking 2 years. It’s safe to say this chatbot has well and truly taken the world by storm, which attests to the scale and attention that AI can command. The model is the product of intense machine learning and being trained on half a trillion words, with encyclopedias, scholarly articles, news reports all being churned into the model as a process of machine learning. The company posits that the amount of books used to train the AI would take more than 1000 human lifetimes to finish reading. Over the span of the next year, we can expect this technology to develop exponentially and with Google now claiming to be developing a similar chatbox service, this space is certainly one to watch in the coming future.

The second development is ‘DoNotPay’, a company that claims itself to be the ‘first robot lawyer’ and provides AI-driven services to help negotiate bills and settle litigation issues in court. The model works with the AI listening to arguments in courts, before formulating responses and counter-arguments which will be transmitted to the defendant to defend him or herself. It sounds preposterous at first, but it has raised $27.7 million in funding rounds thus far and the company is looking to implement the technology in actual courtrooms very soon.

With all that said, it is beyond doubt that we are seeing a shift in the world and the way in which technology is being used today. I believe that the world is now shifting from what we call the ‘Information Age’, which came about with the advent of computers, the internet and smartphones pioneered by tech masterminds that will most certainly go down in the history books such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, to the ‘Education Age’. The ‘Education Age’ will see modern technology and AI in particular interpreting a series of facts, details and scholarly information over a period of time, before trimming them down to concise information that can be utilised easily by humans. There is no doubt that analysing and consuming large amounts of information, be it in the form of reading books or studying materials, will slowly become excess to requirements for humans. This gradual yet systemic shift will also see AI gaining intelligence in their craft, as well as autonomy in their actions and responses. This is only a natural byproduct of feeding AI with the countless amounts of information that is present in our world, as they operate free of the restrictions and limits that humans are posed with. Think of it as a 'layer 2' to the systems and operations that technology is carrying out for humanity,building upon the foundations that have been established.

The first change that AI will bring to the legal industry, and would be felt most immediately would likely be the elimination of repetitive, robotic tasks such as legal research and reviewing of archives and documents. Westlaw Edge, an online legal research service firm launched by Thomas Reuters allows users to search across large databases of legal precedents for research and preparation purposes. It is backed by powerful advanced search functions and is being tapped on by numerous countries around the world, spanning from China to India to the States whilst being built on the world’s leading and newest information on law, business, finance, politics and more social matters. It is instinctive to believe that this would bring about massive boosts in productivity in the legal sector, as preparation and research can be simplified and made more efficient by the use of AI and technology. Whilst AI has not been fully integrated to legal research just yet, we can expect that the direction in which Westlaw and other tech legal firms are heading in is just a sneak peek into what AI and future developments can truly bring to the table. Lawgeex is another famous service providing start up that has helped firms across the globe review contracts and generate reports at efficacy rates superior to that of humans. The direct fruits of AI that we will observe is attorney productivity increasing with the incorporation of advanced AI, as it can perform repetitive tasks at speeds of a few folds faster and avoid human error. The ‘Quick Chat’ feature in Westlaw’s service utilises AI to analyse a draft argument to acquire further information and insights, all whilst surfacing possible points that might have been missed. Such laborious tasks that would typically take humans hours to days to complete, can now be processed within minutes - and that is groundbreaking. The drawbacks of possible retrenchments of jobs such as paralegals will however be prominent as the manpower required in the preliminary stages of a legal process such as researching, drafting and filing will become replaceable by AI. The 'backroom' figures in the law industry will no doubt be the first victims to feel the foreseeable impact of AI and its development, and this will be a cause for concern in the future.

Predicting outcomes of cases and AI-led predictive judgement in the legal industry is also on the rise and the term ‘Judge-Bots’ is being thrown about more frequently today. Whilst such technology is still novel and very much in its infant stages, predicting legal outcomes and how a case will end up is one of AI's newly discovered ability. Predictive models can aid attorneys by advising them on the appropriate actions to take to increase the chances of winning a case, or perhaps even to urge their clients to settle. Lex Machina, an American legal analytics firm is now using machine learning and predictive analytics to gain insights and knowledge on judges and lawyers, as well as their past history to predict potential behaviours and outcomes of a case. From a financial standpoint, this is huge. We might very well see clients paying the biggest sums for companies that can utilise their AI the most accurately, using the tool to predict legal ramifications and appropriate actions to take before going to court, for example. However, AI’s inability to make exceptions in situations can bring about unfair judgements and creation of an inherent bias, very much like in humans. For one, AI’s advising on sentencing decisions might be inclined to racial prejudices, as assessment tools might be biased against black prisoners, flagging them as having a higher probability of reoffending and going back into prison. This is obviously not what we want when we utilise AI, and hence the loopholes and areas of improvement still remain.

What would this mean for lawyers and what they stand for?

The legal industry has long been heralded as a cut-throat, all-demanding industry. The intellectual demands and filtering system to select the best people that can cope with the arduous life of an attorney is now posed with a direct and imminent threat, as AI (as the name suggests) has proven to be a force of sheer superior intellect and efficiency to humans. With the exponential growth of AI might we see a dwindle in the number of talents wanting to enter the legal industry? Will firms start opting to implement chatbot services and AI services into their business model instead of going through recruitment processes to sieve out individuals for the job? While only time will tell, I personally believe that the incorporation and advancement of AI will make the demand for two things go up.

Firstly, the best lawyers will now need to embrace technology and AI as an aid, instead of perceiving them as competition. A nuanced understanding of AI and its capabilities, as well as how it can enhance and boost their performance in their job will unequivocally be a winning element, as the very elite attorneys must now co-exist and cooperate with AI to attain their end goal and desired outcomes. The demand for such lawyers will surely be on the rise in the near future, and as such law schools can start preparing for this prospect by teaching prospective lawyers what type of legal AI softwares there are, how they can operate and how one can implement it in their work. Alternatively, firms can send their employees to courses or seminars held by tech companies to retrain and relearn their craft, incorporating AI into the methodology.

Secondly, with AI being able to perform tasks such as drafting, filing and researching at unmatched efficacy rates, lawyers will now need to step up in the department of soft skills to differentiate themselves from their competition in the increasingly cutthroat industry. Hard skills like researching are going to be eaten up by AI, there is no question about that. But the ability to communicate clearly with clients, lead a team of associates, or pitch an idea to the firm’s board will hardly be able to be replaced by AI, no matter how developed it may be. Such skills that boil down to individuals remain valuable regardless of external changes to technology or AI’s incorporation and infiltration into the industry, which also poses the question about the importance of using law degrees and which university one graduates from as a metric in today’s world. Legal soft skills and clientele work remain as the bedrock of a world-class legal service and should be the core priority of a law firm - only then can they remain elite and well-respected amidst the implementation of a superior technological force in AI.

I believe that the legal industry, at least for the next century, will still require thinkers and visionaries to spearhead its progress. The leaders of this industry will continue to be those who can command and control their team, and work best with clients to serve their needs and provide professionalism to society in their craft. AI, machine learning and automation is a development that lawyers should keep an eye on, and as and when possible embrace and incorporate it into their craft to boost their performance and productivity. However, the industry’s gradual shift to a more technological-centred model must not turn into overreliance on AI, as that would erode the foundations of law, which in its purest form entails human interactions, debate, problem-solving and thought invoking exchanges. That, i'm afraid, AI is unable to imitate.