Will Advanced AI Spell the End of Lawyers?

HughPickens.com writes: Lawyers have been described as the canaries in the coal mine in the face of a wave of automation now beginning to displace highly skilled white-collar workers as the increasing reliance on so-called "e-discovery" software in lawsuits raises the specter that $35-an-hour paralegals as well as $400-an-hour lawyers could fall victim to programs that could read and analyze legal documents more quickly and accurately than humans. Now John Markoff writes in the NY Times that a new study, "Can Robots Be Lawyers?", by Dana Remus analyzes which aspects of a lawyer's job could be automated and concludes that many of the tasks that lawyers perform fall well within human behavior that cannot be easily codified. "When a task is less structured, as many tasks are," writes Remus, "it will often be impossible to anticipate all possible contingencies."

According to Markoff being a lawyer involves performing a range of tasks including counseling, appearing in court, and persuading juries. Reading documents accounts for a relatively modest portion of a lawyer's activities. Remus estimates that about 13 percent of all legal work might ultimately fall prey to automation. According to Markoff, if that amount of work disappeared in a single year, it would be devastating but implemented over many years, this amount of technological change will be less noticeable. Even in the case of start-ups like LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer, two sites that can aid in the preparation of legal documents, the impact of automation will more likely be in expanding into underserved markets rather than in displacing existing legal services.. ""A careful look at existing and emerging technologies reveals that it is only relatively structured and repetitive tasks that can currently be automated," concludes Remus. "These tasks represent a relatively modest percentage of lawyers' billable hours."

Comments

Re:Wrong End

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you allowed to code them to be aware of jury nullification?

not in the U.S.

[turkeydance]

lawyers will pass laws restricting that.

Robo-Readers

[geminidomino]

Reading documents accounts for a relatively modest portion of a lawyer's activities

Even if this is true, it would still be a death knell for the rather dubious practice of "burying the opposition in paperwork." Sounds like a partial win, at least.

Can they make a robot good at rules lawyering?

[gijoel]

Because that's what you're paying for when you hire a lawyer. Someone who's good at finding loopholes.

What about negotiation and mediation? Can robots sweet talk people who have good cause to dislike you into agreeing to a deal that may work against them? Because that's what the really expensive lawyers do.

What good is overcomplicated law?

[epyT-R]

If humans cannot understand the laws they are expected to obey, then the only reason to have such law is to enable capricious enforcement for the purpose of oppression.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[bws111]

This is complete bullshit. Laws are not complicated just so they can be used for oppression, they are complicated because they deal strictly with human beings, and humans are complicated.

Here's a simple law - if you kill another human you are put to death. Easy to understand, right? Now don't go complicating it up by adding conditions like accidental, or self defense, or unable to know right from wrong, or heat of the moment, or anything else. You really think that is better?

Some of the very worst laws are the simplest. Things like zero tolerance and mandatory sentencing.

And that doesn't even get into the whole area of civil law.

Re:Wrong End

[Anonymous Coward]

Your note even allowed to tell human jurors about Jury Nullification. Fastest way out of jury duty is to announce that you believe in Jury Nullification, they will get you out of the pool quick before you can explain what it is. lol

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

Should lawyers be eliminated? Hell yes, by any means necessary.

Such as the institution of the explicitly lawless (and lawyer free) society envisaged by Orwell in 1984 (and approached by countless C20th dictatorships where there was (is) at best a simulacrum of law)? Or by the Hobbesian brutality we witness in those places where all state authority breaks down? Barbarism or The Rule of Whim are the known alternatives to the Rule of Law.

Don't forget what law is. It does not always look like it, but law is the technology by which our culture protects its individual members from the arbitrary exercise of power (whether that of the state of or powerful individuals). If you want rights and you want the individual liberty that law bestows, you'll have to put up with lawyers I'm afraid.

Re:Should it?

[ClickOnThis]

Should lawyers be eliminated? Hell yes, by any means necessary.

[...]

Can we do it with guns? Don't know about the US, but it has worked in other countries.

Be careful what you wish for. An oft-quoted line from Shakespeare's Henry VI:

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Sounds trite and catchy. But the line was spoken by a criminal, in the context of overthrowing the government.

Re:Should it?

[dryeo]

The government that was passing maximum wage laws to keep those workers in their place? Bloody criminals, thinking that just because there was a shortage of workers, they should get more pay. Bastards even wanted the freedom to move around looking for more pay.
There were peasant revolts all over Europe after the black death thinned out the workers and sadly not one succeeded.