Institute of Management, Nirma University - Logo

AI Vs Lawyers – How does the Future Look Like?

Technology has definitely made our lives way easier, so much so that today we can’t avoid technology even if we wish to. The black screens had taken over a long time ago, and now it is time for the advanced tech to creep in our everyday lives slowly. Similar to how emails changed the way of corporate communication and reformed how we do business, artificial intelligence in the legal field will also turn the way law as a profession is approached. AI has been warmly accepted in other professional groups as a solution provider like in medicine, education, automation, defence, etc. and now it is making its way in the courts as well.

The Role of Deep Learning
But before we delve into how it is going to impact legal profession, let’s first talk about its important sub-set – the role of deep learning in AI. Deep learning is a machine learning function that teaches machines to mimic human reactions and their workings based on the data provided to them. This is the basic function that aids successful projects like driverless cars, voice-controlled devices like Alexa, etc. For e.g., to be able to respond to a red traffic signal in the right manner by stopping the car until the signal turns green, deep learning technology has to be applied. This also provides a lot of processing power to the AI-enabled devices. And in legal profession too, deep learning will prove to be the most critical element.

The Role of AI in Lawyering
Lawyers are supposed to do extensive researches, read about things thoroughly, and do a lot of high volume mundane recurring tasks that take up a lot of hours of their productive time. Though this only adds to their case and makes it stronger, it also is a very time-consuming process. All of this can be very well taken care of by AI Robot lawyers. These Robot lawyers, unlike humans, will do the work more efficiently without tiring themselves, with a minimum scope of mistakes and errors. The use of AI in lawyering will only make the legal space more competent. The excellent lawyers who’d be losing those crucial hours to labour would be open to taking up more cases after their schedules would loosen up post getting rid of the calculation work. In AI-enabled firms, lawyers would be driven to perform better, to do work with higher accuracy and add more to the substantiality of the organization they work in. Overall, AI in lawyering too could become a possible solution provider just like in other professional groups.

AI’s Contribution to the Future of Law
The advent of AI has been misconstrued as a replacement for humans. And this conception might follow on in AI Legal services. In fact, this question must have popped up in your head too but be assured that is not the case here. The rise of AI is nothing but an extremely efficient helping hand to the lawyer. If you’re thinking there’ll be robot lawyers with their black and white suits on fighting in the courtroom to win, then sadly, nothing of this sort is on the cards yet. It’ll still be lawyers in the flesh going head-to-head in front of the judge. For the lawyers to remain competitive and relevant in the rapidly changing corporate environment, they will have to make use of this technology. And as far as slashing of jobs is concerned, then if some traditional jobs of lawyers were lowered, data analytics and AI-related jobs would open up instead. Law firms will focus on building exclusive technological and engineering departments to handle the AI-related issues, again giving a rise in the job count of a company. Along with this, the introduction of AI in this profession will also make the legal services relatively more affordable, and the legal department more productive.

Human Lawyer Over AI!
There are some things that technology will not be able to handle. Laws that are related to the domestic part of the society need to be handled with emotions and not technology. A human lawyer can never be replaced but AI is an enabler for better enforcement of laws. The complexities of the human emotions cannot be configured through artificial intelligence. The AI is not replacing lawyers but helping them to align processes and work hassle-free in the future.

 The Accuracy of AI Programs and Potential Growth Opportunities
AI, as warned by Elon Musk among many others, is a more dangerous threat to humanity than nuclear weapons and its rate of rapid improvement is scaring him to hell. But that will not so accurately apply here because AIs can’t compete with human lawyers with their creative thinking and their value of judgement earned with years of experience. The regulation over AI and Human-AI paired teams together can achieve a lot more than either of the two separately can in the field of law.

Since there is no stopping the further advancement of technology, a software upgrade of AIs where they are able to generate simple and reoccurring documents, make agreements, etc. seems to be the next step ahead. Technological innovations have time and again surprised all of us, and in this legal space, AI’s contribution too would bring a big transformation, only for the better.