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

Wrong End

[retroworks]

You need to start with robot jurors.

Re:Wrong End

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wrong End

[rmdingler]

At the rate at which folks around here respond to jury summons,

a robot substitute would be a big seller.

Re:Wrong End

[Maxo-Texas]

Only if they understand robot nullification.

Re:Wrong End

[Tablizer]

At the rate at which folks around here respond to jury summons, a robot substitute would be a big seller.

Why can't they tap all the unemployed/underemployed people? Jury duty is a PITA for working folks. Maybe a working person can pay a small fee to supplement their jury stipend.

I know it may bias the jury poll toward the poor, but it may not matter much for many types of trials. The lawyers always filter out those who are too smart anyhow.

Re:Wrong End

[Tablizer]

I didn't mean to imply the poor are dumb. Many just lack discipline, people skills, or hit hard-luck beyond their control. I encounter may working idiots also who use BS to get a paycheck.

I should have said, "The lawyers always filter out those who are too smart or experienced anyhow."

Re:Wrong End

[rmdingler]

A relative of mine recently sat on a week long jury trial.

He was that rare guy who was paid for the time he missed at work, but the rest of the jury was pretty much unemployed or retired.

It would be nice to see more firms count a yearly turn as juror as a paid, excused absence from work.

Re:Wrong End

[Captain Splendid]

Sadly, the one industry that actually understands the need for jurors can't encourage/recompense their workers towards jury duty. Forget any conflicts of interest, no lawyer worth his degree wants a juror with any experience in the legal field to sit on a trial.

Re:Wrong End

[PopeRatzo]

I know it may bias the jury poll toward the poor

That would be an interesting reversal, wouldn't it?

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:Wrong End

[penguinoid]

No, no, you want to start with robot lawyers. Guaranteed to be soulless*.

*Soullessness not actually guaranteed. May contain more soul than human lawyer.

Re:Wrong End

[Imrik]

Unfortunately it would only mean poor people on juries, not people biased in favor of the poor, who are usually rich and feeling guilty about it.

Re:Wrong End

[pete6677]

The 2 times I have been called for jury duty opened my eyes to just how stupid some people are. Let's just say I hope I never have to have anything important about my life decided on by a jury. I'd rather go with a coin toss.

Re:Wrong End

[Opportunist]

Actually, jury duty itself does.

Face it, the 12 goons sitting in the jury box are just the first 12 they could find that didn't have the smarts to weasel out of it.

Re:Wrong End

[Opportunist]

No, but we might get to see rich people actually getting a conviction now and then.

Re:Wrong End

[Opportunist]

That kinda reminds me of that 60s slogan "In 50 years machines will be so advanced that we only have to work about 10-20 hours anymore. Life's going to be a dream!"

Re:Wrong End

[whoever57]

The one time I got close to being on a jury (I was one of the last jurors to be rejected during voir dire), about half the jury members had a masters degree. Mostly liberal arts.

Re:Wrong End

[dbIII]

Some people actually like that sort of thing. Others see it a s a duty. I'm not one but I work with a guy that did volunteer. He's probably the "smart" one because his work can be shifted onto other people enough to not have to come in on weekends when things go to shit, and he could be away for a few weeks without losing his job.

Re:Wrong End

[spyfrog]

So are you disagreeing with the OP or agreeing?

Re:Wrong End

[XxtraLarGe]

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

For those who don't know what jury nullification is: Fully Informed Jury Association

Lots of good information here, that you will almost never hear from a judge or prosecuting attorneys.

Re:Wrong End

[ArmoredDragon]

As somebody who is salaried, I get paid by my job whether I am at jury duty or not. However my only complaint about it is that the juror selection process sucks balls, at least at my local county courthouse. They make you sit and wait in a giant waiting room with nothing to do all day long on the off chance that you *might* get selected, and then all they compensate you with for it is $40.

In my case I didn't even get interviewed: Myself, along with a crowd of others, were just there til the day ended and then they said "thanks, but we don't need anymore" and sent us home. I think we all spent about 10 hours there just being bored. It was like waiting at the DMV, only worse.

Re:Wrong End

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Having served on a jury once it was an enlightening experience. The case was a stupid civil one over a 2 car collision where the person who was rear-ended was the defendant. I saw plenty of really stupid people in the jury pool as most others do but afterwards the judge had a 10-15 minute Q&A with the jury to answer any questions we had about the process. The first question we all asked was why did this case make it this far as it took about 2 minutes to come to a decision (most of that was in picking a foreman for the jury) and was very clear the the defendant was not at fault and was something that should have been handled in small claims. The response was that everyone is entitled to have their case heard before a jury but he agreed that this should have ended long before the plaintiff was known to the judges as one who keeps appealing and getting things kicked up to a higher level until he runs out of options and looses. Also during the court proceeding there was a discussion between the 2 lawyers and the judge and we wondered what that was about. Turns out it was about insurance what wasn't relevant anyway.

Previous to sitting on that jury I spent 1.5 days in the selection process and when asked about level of education and stating I had a BS was immediately dropped from each one. Thankfully I did get selected so once that trial was done I didn't have to continue showing up for the rest of the week as I had served.

Re: Wrong End

[MitchDev]

Or ethics, or humanity...

Re:Wrong End

[blue9steel]

The productivity increased enough, but somehow as a society we decided that we'd prefer a small class of fabulously wealthy people while things slowly declined for everyone else instead.

Re: Wrong End

[malditaenvidia]

But it does involve memorization, which makes it perfect for AI.

Re:Wrong End

[orgelspieler]

Absolutely untrue, and shame on you for perpetuating such a horrible myth.

I could have easily gotten out of jury duty by making some outrageous racist claim or the like. But I'm smart enough to know that if everybody does that, then when I get wrongfully accused of something there won't be anybody intelligent to see through the DA's BS. The case I was on, they had zero evidence. Just a BS story from a stripper. No bloodstains on her dress, no knife, nothing. DA was a damn good lawyer, and the defendant's lawyer was not. Believe it or not, the first time through deliberation, a couple of people actually voted guilty. Had it been a room full of room-temperature IQ's, that case could have easily gone the other way.

Smart people don't weasel out of it if they are smart enough to think of the long-term ramifications of that unethical mindset.

Re:Wrong End

[mrchaotica]

I wish more people who believe in jury nullification would want to serve on juries!

Re:Wrong End

[Falos]

It's a story older than flying cars, but sure, let's trot it out, there's a bit of fresh context.

If the concept of human beauty uses the unobtainable optimal as a measuring stick, then attraction is a manufactured synthetic already. If humans are varied and thus certain to be flawed to someone, then only custom delivery can provide your desired parameters.

I suppose it's like arguing that only a robot musician could be "perfect".

Re: Wrong End

[KGIII]

Ah, but laws are usually written by lawyers. Do you think they'll obsolete themselves?

Re:Wrong End

[KGIII]

I kind of like jury duty and don't get picked often enough. I do see it as a duty and I do enjoy the process. I'd never try to "weasel" my way out of it. It's part of the social contract to give my peer's justice - which does mean, unfortunately, finding the defendant guilty if the facts prove that, beyond reasonably doubt, the defendant is guilty. I'm also a bit of a stickler that the State must do its job and prove that, even if it means that I must insist the defendant be found not guilty when I know damned well they probably did it but the State has failed to demonstrate that.

Re:Wrong End

[david_thornley]

In my county, you don't get out of jury duty unless you're 70 or older. You can take that two-week commitment any time in the next nine months from your summons, but you are required to serve.

Last time I was summoned, my boss's boss's boss's boss was also there. I think he would have tried to get out of it if it was possible.

Re:Wrong End

[tehcyder]

Actually, jury duty itself does.

Face it, the 12 goons sitting in the jury box are just the first 12 they could find that didn't have the smarts to weasel out of it.

Indeed, it is the epitome of "smarts" to be a selfish sociopath with no conception of public duty or interest in wider society.

Re:Wrong End

[tehcyder]

Sufficiently advanced AI will be able to perform *all* work that humans now perform, and do a better job of it than humans possibly could.

Do not fear...our robots will be the perfect slave race. Superior to us in every way but driven by the singular desire to serve our wishes.

So long as we don't destroy ourselves, the future will be all kinds of awesome.

If we had true AI it would be ethically impossible to treat them as slaves.

Re:Wrong End

[Opportunist]

If we wanted full employment, we would.

What those futurists ignored was that factory owners prefer making profits to employing people.

Re:Wrong End

[kmoser]

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

That causes a jury nullification pointer exception in which the robot recommends the death penalty for all crimes, whether the defendant has been found innocent or guilty.

Maybe

[peragrin]

Frosty lawyers?

Of course if Lawyers can be replaced by machines then their rates will go down.

AI will spell the end of lawyers....

[Anonymous Coward]

... the same way the webMD spelled the end of doctors.

Re:AI will spell the end of lawyers....

[darkain]

I stubbed my toe yesterday. Today I apparently have 20 types of cancer because of it. WebMD worked out great! :D Lawyers are doomed. Now all I need is a lawyer bot to sue the guy who placed that table in my way...

Re:AI will spell the end of lawyers....

[plover]

... the same way the webMD spelled the end of doctors.

Did anyone ever predict that?

IBM's Watson has been touted as a diagnostic tool for busy doctors, but it's never been suggested as a replacement in the developed world. However, in countries that are drastically underserved by doctors (Liberia had 40 doctors to serve 4 million people back in 2008 -- that was before Ebola killed half of them), it's possible access to Watson could take the place of a trained physician for many people.

Re:AI will spell the end of lawyers....

[ranton]

It's also smart that lawyers "unionized" in the form of the Bar Association so they have the power to fight automation and outsourcing unlike "the every man for himself" state of IS/IT.

I find it amusing that many arguments for and against unions are the exact same argument.

Anti-union: Unions are horrible because they create artificial barriers that hold back efficiency improvements when those improvements hurt existing employees.
Pro-Union: Unions are great because they create artificial barriers that hold back efficiency improvements when those improvements hurt existing employees.

Re:AI will spell the end of lawyers....

[tehcyder]

... the same way the webMD spelled the end of doctors.

Did anyone ever predict that? Say in the way they predicted that spreadsheets would spell the end to accountants?

Spreadsheets and computerised accounts systems didn't spell the end for accountants. They did, however, spell the end for many bookkeepers and ledger clerks, in the same way that word processors spelled the end for many copy typists.

Re:AI will spell the end of lawyers....

[tehcyder]

It's also smart that lawyers "unionized" in the form of the Bar Association so they have the power to fight automation and outsourcing unlike "the every man for himself" state of IS/IT.

I find it amusing that many arguments for and against unions are the exact same argument.

Anti-union: Unions are horrible because they create artificial barriers that hold back efficiency improvements when those improvements hurt existing employees. Pro-Union: Unions are great because they create artificial barriers that hold back efficiency improvements when those improvements hurt existing employees.

It depends on whether you're an employee in that particular area facing the potential loss of your livelihood.

The issue on slashdot is that most programmers are currently in a boom period and can't conceive of things changing, and therefore think unions are pointless.

Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

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

Can we do it by simplification, increased transparency and uniformity (from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) of the justice system? Partly.

Can we do it with advanced AI? Partly.

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

Re:Should it?

[Crashmarik]

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

Can we do it by simplification, increased transparency and uniformity (from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) of the justice system? Partly.

Can we do it with advanced AI? Partly.

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

Can you name a country where revolution has reduced the number of lawyers longterm ? Not that I am adverse to the idea of a periodic bloodletting.

Re:Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

Can you name a country where revolution has reduced the number of lawyers longterm ? Not that I am adverse to the idea of a periodic bloodletting.

You got me there, in the current environment they seem to repopulate, like cockroaches.

Maybe if we had enough transparency, simplification, and AI in the system a coup would be enough to finish them off for good.

I heard an ex-Surinamese once describe their revolution of 1982 as "all they had to do was kill a few lawyers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Should it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

All:
God save your majesty!

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

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

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.

Re:Should it?

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealand, and this is how - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_Compensation_Corporation
"Due to the Scheme's no-fault basis, people who have suffered personal injury do not have the right to sue an at-fault party, except for exemplary damages."

so, medical misadventure is covered by it, work place injuries, etc. That is a LARGE amount of legal shittery gone.

The Tenancy tribunal takes care of anything to do with renting, which ALSO takes care of a large amount of legal stuff.

The family court "discourages" having lawyers involved. Which removes a large chunk there.

If you structure your legal system well and have reasonable safety nets in place, you can remove a LOT of lawyer work.

Re:Should it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not let Lawyers do the AI training phase. It will end up in some kind of recursive loop emptying your bank account until divide by zero occurs.

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?

[Opportunist]

Well, one has to start it. If Lenin said "Have you ever seen this work?", we wouldn't have seen first hand how great Communism works.

Re:Should it?

[ClickOnThis]

+1 Insightful

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.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

Which is all well and good, however lawyers should be strictly forbidden from ever serving in public office due to conflict of interest.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

After invention of the stirrup and prior to firearms warfare was strongly slanted in favor small armies of well armed professionals. That didn't bode well for mass uprisings.

Re:Should it?

[Crashmarik]

Imagine how happy Russia would have been not to be the beta test.

Re:Should it?

[ewibble]

Russians probably weren't that happy before communism either. Also we need to try new things sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, most times somewhere in the middle. If we don't try new things then we would never progress. At one point democracy and capitalism where had never tried either. Are they a total success? Probably not, but from my point of view better than what we had before, It doesn't mean they can't be improved on.

Re:Should it?

[dryeo]

The English did pretty well with armies composed of freemen armed with longbows. Even the heavy cavalry wasn't really professional in to-days sense, rather composed of people who owed fealty.

Re:Should it?

[ewibble]

I theory I agree, but the cost of lawyers has made it impractical the average person to get justice. Many people get little or no access to a lawyer from http://www.nlada.org/Defender/....

Many individuals get nothing more than a few minutes of their attorney’s time and a hurried guilty plea

Even if you can afford a lawyer you often risk going into serious debt to defend your rights.

Simpler laws in which people could stand up for themselves, banning lawyers from certain areas of law, and AI lawyers could help this significantly. I believe every person has the right to their legal rights defended to the same degree no matter what their financial status is.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

Sure, but there were many cultural and legal structures in England to promote longbow proficiency. I think we can safely call Feudal lords raised to the horse and lance professionals. Sure, maybe not in a 21st century sense, they were warriors but not really soldiers, but well trained nevertheless. My point was that the weapons tended to favor those with extensive training and expensive equipment over mass armies. Once firearms advanced enough to change that emphasis then we saw fairly rapid changes in government to match. Political systems nearly always mirror the military realities of the day.

Re:Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

See another reply re: New Zealand and how they are stumbling toward lawyer free nirvana.

It's not the concept of the law that is a problem, it is the manifestation of its agents - similar to the problems with religion and the church in the middle ages.

Re:Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

My personal lawyer experience was being sued in small claims court, over a $100 difference of opinion, by a person who was afraid of what they had done to charge me the money in the first place and so used a lawyer to try to scare me away from the situation. Loooong story short, I ended up paying $600 to settle, would have had to front over $3000 to mount a defense with a chance of succeeding, zero chance of recovery of those monies even if I pursued a more expensive strategy that included winning judgement for payment of my expenses (plaintiff had a long list of creditors in line in front of me to collect on them), in short: bad on us for trusting a friend who recommended engaging with this service provider and not investigating them (personally) more deeply before signing up for service. I did investigate the company they appeared to work for, and they appeared reputable - and they also ended up letting this person go after the dust settled, but they couldn't risk being "judged in the wrong" so they stood solidly by them until it was over.

In my view, small claims court should forbid professional legal representation (and it does in many states, but not mine.)

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

lawyers should be strictly forbidden from ever serving in public office

Prohibiting law graduates from serving on the legislature is like prohibiting computer science graduates being involved in software development.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

I theory I agree, but the cost of lawyers has made it impractical the average person to get justice. Many people get little or no access to a lawyer ...

Socialist gloss: That's a problem of social equity rather than law or legal practice. What we need is a fairer distribution of social resources. Capitalist gloss: Obviously the supply of lawyers is unable to meet the requisite demand, ergo, we need more lawyers, not less! ;)

That is largely a problem of social equity rather than law or legal practice.

... Even if you can afford a lawyer you often risk going into serious debt to defend your rights.

In most common law jurisdictions the default order is that the losing party meets the winning party's costs. That deincentivises the abuse of process whereby wealthy litigants without real prospects of success litigate merely to inflict financial pain on their victims. I understand this is not the case in the U.S., why not, I cannot fathom. Where I live, I believe, a lawyer is still prohibited from filing a claim or defence where there are "no reasonable prospects of success."

Also the fact that some firms work on a no-win/no-pay basis or tax-payer funded legal aid for the poor (which urgently needs more funding where I live) can mitigate against the evil you highlight.

I believe every person has the right to their legal rights defended to the same degree no matter what their financial status is.

Abso-fucken-lutely! That is what Law is meant to offer, the realities of existing in a world of vast financial inequality notwithstanding.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

See another reply re: New Zealand and how they are stumbling toward lawyer free nirvana.

They're not and they won't. It's simply that in the arena of personal injury they have opted for a universal tax-payer funded compensation scheme, which idea has much to recommend it. You're dreaming (as was OP) if you think that eliminates lawyers from the field.

It's not the concept of the law that is a problem, it is the manifestation of its agents

Or at least some of them. Which is why I wrote, if you want rights ... "you'll have to put up with lawyers I'm afraid."

Re:Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

Which is why I wrote, if you want rights ... "you'll have to put up with lawyers I'm afraid."

and that is the point that I disagree with... if you really have rights, you shouldn't have to pay unregulated agents to get those rights.

Montesquieu, a lawyer himself, believed that under a just government no man should live in fear of another - which was progressive thinking for its time, and we've made great progress in this direction. I think, after more than two centuries of universal education, that we may be ready for every man to know their (true) rights and how to obtain them, on equal footing, without having to buy the most talented and expensive agents to enjoy their rights through arcane tricks and manipulations.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

if you really have rights, you shouldn't have to pay unregulated agents to get those rights.

Unregulated agents? I thought we were talking about lawyers? Seriously, I don't know where you are, but here in Australia, lawyers are the most heavily regulated professionals of the lot.

Montesquieu, a lawyer himself, believed that under a just government no man should live in fear of another - which was progressive thinking for its time, and we've made great progress in this direction.

Yes! It was my point that we have achieved this by means of law.

I think, after more than two centuries of universal education, that we may be ready for every man to know their (true) rights and how to obtain them, on equal footing ...

So make everyone a lawyer. ;)

Your true rights are those rights you can get enforced, in your favour, in a court of law. Other "rights" are vapourware (until you can get them incorporated into the law such that the preceding applies).

... without having to buy the most talented and expensive agents to enjoy their rights through arcane tricks and manipulations.

They only appear to be "arcane tricks and manipulations" to those not on an equal footing. You are correct however that money still speaks too loudly in claiming "the most talented" lawyers.

Maybe you should consider going to law school you that you can "know [your] (true) rights and how to obtain them." Or you can save yourself the effort and hire someone else to do the job for you should the need arise (hopefully not).

Re:Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

I'm coming at this from a U.S. perspective, and our lawyers are regulated, but not as to the fees they charge. My personal experience in legal wrangling was a little twisted in that I was sued in small claims court by someone who hired the only small claims lawyer in the county - it makes for a very unfair situation when there's only one lawyer who's willing to represent in a certain court. The plaintiff knew about this from her frequent experience being sued in the local court for debts she defaulted on, frequently being on the opposite side from the lawyer she hired to sue us. We ultimately "shut it off" by finding a lawyer who represented our interests pro bono to obtain an out of court settlement, without that we would have likely been more than five times as screwed over as we were. Our lawyer never said she would work for free, but when it was settled she never returned my phone calls seeking to settle with her for her time, and she never billed us, so...

The truth of the matter is as you say "hopefully not" when it comes to legal issues - but, to me, this makes the whole system somewhat of a farce, it's irrelevant unless you're willing to pay a very steep cost of entry. It's a complete joke for small claims, and takes a heavy tariff on larger issues. As you say, you can devote all your time to it so you don't have to hire someone, but that's an even higher price than money in most cases. I feel like a heavy dose of increased transparency and simplicity in the system is what is needed, but the lawyers (and lawyers who go on to become legislators and judges) are stretching the system in the opposite direction (obfuscation, complexity) as hard as they can.

Re:Should it?

[tehcyder]

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

Yes, I too would rather live in a country ruled by guns than law. Oh wait, no I wouldn't, because I'm not a fucking fascist psychopath.

Re:Should it?

[tehcyder]

Which is why I wrote, if you want rights ... "you'll have to put up with lawyers I'm afraid."

and that is the point that I disagree with... if you really have rights, you shouldn't have to pay unregulated agents to get those rights.

Montesquieu, a lawyer himself, believed that under a just government no man should live in fear of another - which was progressive thinking for its time, and we've made great progress in this direction. I think, after more than two centuries of universal education, that we may be ready for every man to know their (true) rights and how to obtain them, on equal footing, without having to buy the most talented and expensive agents to enjoy their rights through arcane tricks and manipulations.

Similarly, everyone should be their own car mechanic, doctor, architect, IT expert, carpenter, accountant, plasterer, electrician, chef, tailor and plumber.

In reality, no one can be equally good at every single thing, whatever the rugged individualist fantasies of the wild west types here.

Re:Should it?

[tehcyder]

But the line was spoken by a criminal, in the context of overthrowing the government.

To many people on slashdot, as long as it's anti-government it's good.

Re:Should it?

[tehcyder]

Political systems nearly always mirror the military realities of the day.

Or vice versa.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

Actually it's more like prohibiting bank CEOs from become SEC chairman.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

I would argue that's a one way relationship.

Re:Should it?

[JoeMerchant]

Which is why I wrote, if you want rights ... "you'll have to put up with lawyers I'm afraid."

and that is the point that I disagree with... if you really have rights, you shouldn't have to pay unregulated agents to get those rights.

Montesquieu, a lawyer himself, believed that under a just government no man should live in fear of another - which was progressive thinking for its time, and we've made great progress in this direction. I think, after more than two centuries of universal education, that we may be ready for every man to know their (true) rights and how to obtain them, on equal footing, without having to buy the most talented and expensive agents to enjoy their rights through arcane tricks and manipulations.

Similarly, everyone should be their own car mechanic, doctor, architect, IT expert, carpenter, accountant, plasterer, electrician, chef, tailor and plumber.

In reality, no one can be equally good at every single thing, whatever the rugged individualist fantasies of the wild west types here.

However, we should not allow the car manufacturers to make automobiles that are deliberately difficult for the owner to fix, nor medical devices that needlessly restrict access to care just so doctors can line their pockets, I'm o.k. with architects being specialized - unless we start passing laws that require specific architects to sign off on plans for every structure built and the cost of the signoff is higher than (or an unreasonable percentage of) the cost of the structure or any reasonably foreseeable additional liability incurred from a bad design, IT experts who hoard "secret knowledge" just to attempt to improve their job security, carpenters who do shoddy work so they will have more business in the future, tax laws that are needlessly complicated making work for accountants, plasterers electricians and especially plumbers: see carpenters, chefs - meh - if you don't like your chef cook your own food - they don't seem to be out of hand yet - but if they went the way of so many other industries you wouldn't be permitted to cook your own food, or given access to purchase the ingredients without membership in the guild - how much fun would that be? - tailors are pretty out of hand, not the custom ones, but the whole retail market where a $0.73 T shirt gets marked up to $27.50 before the consumer is allowed to purchase it, unless you get it on sale, with a coupon, at an outlet store...

In short, we should have transparency, and some capacity to call bullshit on groups who are excessively lining their pockets in the name of "serving you better." But, you can't call bullshit when the other side can stand back and say "prove it, you can't can you? because we're hiding the proof."

You want secrets? Fine, have your secrets, but your right to have secrets should end when those secrets unavoidably and significantly impact the lives of others.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

Actually it's more like prohibiting bank CEOs from become SEC chairman.

So long as they are ex-CEOs there is no necessary conflict of interest in that. But again, given the function of the SEC I would have thought that qualifications and experience in finance and securities law would be most appropriate to that role. Rather than prohibiting lawyers from holding any public office it might be desirable to require a law degree as a minimum qualification for many of them.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

That would just ensure that only lawyers would understand the laws.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

That would just ensure that only lawyers would understand the laws.

Understanding the laws is what lawyers are for. You wouldn't hire a hairdresser to design a bridge. When particular public offices --such as judges, attorneys general, government attorneys, prosecutors head of statutory quasi-prosecutorial bodies &c. --require understanding the law, (require in effect being lawyers), it should be remarkable to hire anyone other than a trained lawyer.

If you meant having lawyers as legislators would "ensure that only lawyers would understand the laws," I think rather it would ensure (or make it more likely) that the legislator understood the laws they were enacting. No matter who passes the laws (and no matter whether they understand the laws they've passed) it's lawyers (as judges are) who are going to be doing the understanding of those laws.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

Apparently we have very different views of the the law. You seem to think it's a technical subject like engineering that should only be handled by trained professionals. I disagree. The law is merely the rules that we've all agreed to live by and those need to be simple and clear enough that everyone can understand them.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

You seem to think [law] a technical subject like engineering that should only be handled by trained professionals.

It is a highly technical subject. Whether by formal education or autodidactically, acquiring the requisite level of expertise to be effective lawyer, for example to be a judge on the Supreme Court (to name a position from you proposed to ban lawyers), is non-trivial. Simplicity and clarity are devoutly to be wished for, but It's jejune to imagine that the law facilitating a society and an economy as complex as ours might be encompassed by a set of rules "simple and clear enough that everyone can understand them."

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

And I would add ... the notion that restricting the drafting of laws to people devoid of legal training would be liable to generate clarity and simplicity, is optimistic in the extreme.

Re:Should it?

[blue9steel]

Perhaps, but the current method guarantees the opposite.

Re:Should it?

[Capsaicin]

Perhaps, but the current method guarantees the opposite.

Not really. Simplicity and clarity, where they can be achieved are very much in the interest of practising lawyers. But anyway ...

The point of my original post was that in our rush to hate lawyers (which not surprisingly is characteristic of nations with levels of litigation) we forget what the lawyers have done, and continue to do, for us. Just yesterday I read this in Anna Funder's Stasiland.

The German Democratic Republic paid lip service to the institutions of democracy. There were district attorneys, whose job it was to administer justice, and lawyers, whose job it was to represent clients, and judges, whose job it was to pass judgment. There were, at least on paper, political parties other than the ruling Socialist Unity Party. But really there was just the Party, and its instrument, the Stasi. Judges often got their instructions from the Stasi which, in turn, passed them on from the Party --right down to the outcome of judgment and the length of the sentence. The connection of the Party, the Stasi and the law went from the ground up: the Stasi, in consultation with school principals, recruited obedient students, with an appropriately loyal attitude, for the study of law. I once saw a list of dissertation topics from the Stasi Law School at Potsdam, which included such memorable contributions to the sum of human knowledge as 'On the Probably Causes of the Psychological Pathology of the Desire to Commit Border Infractions'. There was no room for a person to defend themselves against the State because all the defence lawyers and judges were part of it ...
... [referring to a lawyer hired for her husband] If he had done nothing for Charlie while he was in prison, she said, he could at least find out how he died.
'Do I look insane to you?' the lawyer said, very cold. 'Do I? You don't truly think I am going to trot down there ans ask what happened, do you? For that you had better find yourself another fool, young lady.'
Miriam is upset again. Here, across the desk, was the face of the system itself: a mockery of a lawyer, making a mockery of her.

I understand it's hard when getting sued, especially if you are unrepresented, to be grateful that we live in a system where lawyers, not mockeries thereof, flourish.

Will Advanced AI Spell the End of Lawyers?

[Anonymous Coward]

One can hope....

this can only end well!

[anzha]

Great! We could sue people as fast as software can file claims. I smell the Baby Cooper Dollar Bill in the making.

Re:this can only end well!

[ArylAkamov]

Holy shit. What did I just read?

Do we really need AI lawyers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but the idea of building bloodsucking, bottom dwelling, ambulance chasing robots who thrive on the spoils of human misery is a bit scary to me.

A robotic lawyer would be half way to a terminator already!

Re:Do we really need AI lawyers ?

[h4x0t]

Would we allow programming of robot lawyers to omit or twist information? If not, they are hardly lawyers at all...

Re:Do we really need AI lawyers ?

[Tablizer]

It would be a slow-motion terminator. Not as flashy, but still bleeping up lives.

Humans Need Not Apply - the AI is coming

[Proudrooster]

If you haven't watched it and are shopping for careers, you should see this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Humans Need Not Apply - the AI is coming

[thinkwaitfast]

Q: If you have general purpose robot that can do anything, what good is an economy for? Tell your robot to build you some solar panels and a house, grow and prepare your own food, build another robot to help with the tasks. Given a few acres of land, a general purpose robot could provide you with everything you needed to survive. Just like all of history up through th last 70 years or so, except now you won't have to work 15 hours/day.

Re:Humans Need Not Apply - the AI is coming

[blue9steel]

You still need land, raw materials and status. Infinite labor doesn't remove scarcity, it just moves it around.

Re:Humans Need Not Apply - the AI is coming

[thinkwaitfast]

Fertile land can be had by anyone for ~$4k/acre, hardly out of the reach of almost anyone. And what is status for?

Re:Humans Need Not Apply - the AI is coming

[blue9steel]

Land has positional value, not everyone can have the downtown penthouse or the cabin over the lake. While some may be happy with any plot of land, most won't be.
After basic needs like food and shelter are taken care of, one of the things humans want most is ways to display status. This has actually been the ruin of many civilizations including the Romans and the Mayans.

Re:Humans Need Not Apply - the AI is coming

[thinkwaitfast]

Envy/greed and (not) being happy wherever you are is a mental health problem, so people can read more dr suess.

not in the U.S.

[turkeydance]

lawyers will pass laws restricting that.

Re:not in the U.S.

[gl4ss]

well, the lawyers already said that the job is too hard for robots because it's impossible to calculate the contingencies.

basically what that means is that the law is broken though. or in other words if you could have robot lawyers you wouldn't need lawyers in the first place.

also what the lawyers said means that the performance of the lawyers is random, because the lawyers said that they don't know the effects of their decisions themselves either.

Re:not in the U.S.

[i.r.id10t]

it's impossible to calculate the contingencies

No, that isn't the legal contingencies - it is the contingency fees... There still isn't quite enough address space in RAM to calculate what the actual contingency fees could run to...

Re:not in the U.S.

[houghi]

The robot-lawyer-producing industry will just buy some politicians.
And at first this will be used by the lawer companies, so they can use less people investigating.

The law will be something like: you can use them, but they still need a human behind them. That way the law companies can be the size of the 4 names on the door. Nothing else. They can do a LOT more work with better results, shutting down the smaller ones.

And then when the majority of people is already gone, the few companies left will want to have this automation. Obviously all because of terrorist children.

Re:not in the U.S.

[speedplane]

lawyers will pass laws restricting that.

They already have. There are lots of rules regarding privacy, billing, and state licensing, which prohibit lawyers from using even the most basic types of technology. Working remotely, accepting payments over the internet, and storing documents on a cloud computers are examples of basic technological steps that face particular hurdles in the legal industry.

You might as well put a question mark at the end o

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the answer is always no. Practice of law is inherently human. Do you think a judge will ever accept a motion filed by a piece of software?

Perhaps an argument could be made that a "robot" judge would accept that, but then you are wading into some deep philosophical waters on the definition of what a judge is...

AI Lawyers

[Dutchmaan]

..will help as far as the letter of the law is concerned, but it has always been my view that the scales of justice were balancing the letter of the law with the spirit of the law.

Re:AI Lawyers

[sjames]

It is more likely to assist a lawyer than be one.

Possible responses:

1. Objection: leading the witness!
2. Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence!
3. Fuck you asshole.

Document Review

[kamapuaa]

I see this as being able to almost completely take over discovery/document review (which is done by lawyers the public will never see, probably working from home, on a non-contractual basis).

The whole process will be pretty much transparent to people who aren't in the field, except that becoming a lawyer will be an even shittier career choice for people who can't get into tier one schools - document review is done by people who graduate from lower-end schools.

Re:Document Review

[kamapuaa]

Generally speaking, document review does require that you have passed the bar, and can't be done by paralegals/unqualified sex partners.

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.

Re:Robo-Readers

[manu0601]

death knell for the rather dubious practice of "burying the opposition in paperwork."

Quite the contrary: drowning opposition in AI-generated paperwork will be cheap. But at some time, human judges will start rejecting excess of paperwork, as they also have to peek at it.

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.

Re:Can they make a robot good at rules lawyering?

[Ryanrule]

You overestimate people.

Re:Can they make a robot good at rules lawyering?

[bigpat]

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.

If I've learned anything the loopholes thing, or even having proof positive that the letter of the law has been broken, is that it is about giving a judge the ability to find in your favor. Judges almost never rule purely on the letter of the law, that is a fiction told to naive children. Judges try to find equity or apply their own biases and a court case is more about negotiation than the law, the facts or the truth.

Computers can do all the bread and butter work of lawyers though, which undermines the profession. Which I think is a good thing. Lawyers are overpriced to the point that any decent or even marginally adequate lawyer is going to cost more than 80% of the population can afford. That leaves the vast majority of the American population without adequate legal advice in a an overcomplicated legal system designed by lawyers to maximize their income.

There is no justice or equity in the system today.

Re:Can they make a robot good at rules lawyering?

[blue9steel]

There is no justice or equity in the system today.

Ahh, Capitalism, where you can have exactly as much justice as you can afford. What could be more equitable than that?

This won't work

[damn_registrars]

Robots are too logical.

Downsized, outsourced, replaced, automated, broke

[Tablizer]

What, outsourcing them to Timbuktu was not enough?

Who will be the last one standing?

Probably the plutocrat owners of it all.

Re: You might as well put a question mark at the e

[elmer at web-axis]

Most legal work is prep work. Ie setting up wills and selling and buying stuff, contracts.. Most of this work is repeptive with small changes which can be done with offshore workers who pass the work back to a 'real' lawyer to rubber stamp even without review.. Lawyers don't need to worry about AI they just need to worry about outsourcing. Welcome to IT's world snowflake.

Re:You might as well put a question mark at the en

[Proudrooster]

Discovery BOTS are coming. In addition to BOTS that stitch together contracts and amended laws like this reducing research time, DIFF is such a handy tool.

(1) Paragraph (Insert paragraph number) of the above identified letter agreement is hereby amended as follows:
(Delineate language in this paragraph that is to be deleted and the language that is to be added in lieu thereof).
(2) Paragraph (Insert paragraph number) of the above identified letter agreement is hereby amended as follows:
(Delineate language in this paragraph that is to be deleted and the language that is to be added in lieu thereof).
With the exception of the abovestated amendments paragraphs (Insert paragraph number) and (Insert paragraph number), it is understood and agreed that all other terms and conditions forming a part of the original Agreement, (Insert the words "as previously amended" and/or "renewed" without the quotations if the agreement has been previously amended or renewed), shall remain in full force and effect.
Please indicate your approval of the abovestated amendments by signing below and returning one fullyexecuted original of this letter agreement to (Insert Name and address). You may retain the other fullyexecuted original for your files.

Ah, not quite, but for a different reason

[sillivalley]

AI's aren't going to replace lawyers in the near term, particularly in discovery - doc production work, but for a different reason.

Why bring in an expensive machine when you can get a swarm of peons for really cheap, and throw them away when you're done?

In most large cities in the country, there are way too many lawyers (yeah, insert favorite joke here), with more being hatched every year. When a big case comes up, or any legal matter requiring a lot of gruntwork, such as going through tons of documents, a lot of law firms hire throw-away lawyers for some times as little as $20 an hour -- and for most of these, they have more folks looking for work than they need. Why would you go with an AI in a situation like that? They're too expensive (at this time), and if the docs are in printed form (which is how the other side will present them to the other side's life as difficult as possible), the docs have to be handled, bates stamped, scanned, and then analyzed. Why not hire a roomful of out of work lawyers $20 an hour to do that, with a few more at a higher rate (say, $30) to do spot check and general QA, eventually feeding to that high priced ($125 an hour) law firm paralegal. And dump them when the task is done.

(Disclosure: I passed the California bar in 1990 and have been through this ratshit. People that save every email they've ever received or sent make a lot of money for law firms handling discovery. Please, don't save all that shit unless it's really needed and useful?)

Re:Ah, not quite, but for a different reason

[kamapuaa]

Going rate for discovery is at least $40/hour. And it's a whole lot of hours billed at that (or higher) rates. It would much things up to do printed today, it's all on computer and that's just how the workflow works, maybe it was different 25 years ago.

Even if it was $20/hour, a roomful of employees earning $20/hour is still a fair amount of money (in modern times they don't provide the office, these jobs are contracted out to people who probably work from home). Heck, McDonalds is busy automating its workers earning $8/hour.

Re:Ah, not quite, but for a different reason

[0100010001010011]

Like all automation they're just going to replace the current lowest paid part of the profession. Just like automation has always. Advances in wood shop and kitchen 'automation' meant you didn't have second cooks just to do the beating of eggs. Large scale mechanization in food processing meant that a large portion of us could do stuff other than grow food.

This will just replace the cheapest lawyers. It's work that a computer can do better and faster than a human. Watson could easily go through all legal documents ever looking for something.

Re:Ah, not quite, but for a different reason

[timrod]

Actually, the going rate for discovery is much lower than that. There are external firms that hire people to process discovery documents - I work for one and it's the worst job I've ever had. People at this company get paid $13 an hour to prepare, scan, and index documents into a database that the actual attorneys can browse at their leisure. As an actual example from my company (which they've explicitly told me not to post in addition to the fact that I should never, ever post anything online so they can fuck right off):

My company does discovery processing for the Blue Cross/Blue Shield network of insurance companies. We get handed thousands of boxes full of paperwork dating back to the early 90s and get told to process everything. A lot of the crap - things like lunch menus, copies of publicly-released promotional material, handwritten notes about the office's Secret Santa pool - gets weeded out at this level so that no one needs to bother to look at it. I've personally seen an entire folder full of printed copies of emails that were less than five words each, something like "This is okay" or "Send back for revision" and another that contained nothing but press releases in Chinese from a firm that Blue Cross either partnered with or was considering partnering with ten-plus years ago.

Honestly, just from a common-sense perspective, 75% of the stuff we scan is so non-controversial that it is highly unlikely that it would ever appear as discovery in a lawsuit and there's really no reason that someone couldn't have just thrown it out years ago. I highly doubt that a potential insurance lawsuit is going to request copies of lunch menus from 2001 when they have the full meeting agenda available.

The workers where I am are treated like garbage. Mandatory 12-hour days to meet deadlines are common (I actually just got home from one two hours ago) and losing contracts even moreso. The pay is low, the managers are assholes, and I'm quitting in two weeks so I can try to get any job that isn't this one.

Of course not ...

[gstoddart]

The lawyers would sue!

John Markoff

[pellik]

Isn't he Chekov's little brother?

Re:John Markoff

[ClickOnThis]

Isn't he Chekov's little brother?

Star Trek TOS fail. Chekov didn't have a brother.

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:What good is overcomplicated law?

[epyT-R]

So, you have a complete understanding and knowledge of every law on the books? I doubt it. You're playing the odds like the rest of us. If advanced AI begins to outpace lawyers, then how can we expect average people to navigate them? Having to hire special law-people to interpret the law for us when challenged by the state (or by another private party) is bad enough.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[epyT-R]

Actually, it's the left that clamors for more gun laws and healthcare regulation.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[bws111]

Since you are the one making the claim that all these oppressive laws are out there, why don't you provide an example of a law that an ordinary citizen risks getting arrested for without knowing such a law existed?

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[epyT-R]

You can be as sanctimonious as you like, but it's completely unreasonable for people to have complete knowledge of every law that applies in every situation they are in. Let me know when you're done building strawman arguments. I never said that all complex law was oppression, just that it could be USED to oppress, and so-called 'advanced AI' would probably make this problem worse. If you want compliance with a law, then the people you expect to follow it must also understand it. What happens when law becomes humanly indecipherable and this AI is now required to determine the 'proper' ruling/punishment? Of course, you knew this was my premise already..

I used google for you and found this. It covers the issue broadly.
http://www.heritage.org/resear...

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you are the one making the claim that all these oppressive laws are out there, why don't you provide an example of a law that an ordinary citizen risks getting arrested for without knowing such a law existed?

I'm not the parent poster, nor am I making the same claim he/she did in that laws are just to oppress people (I agree some laws have been used for this, but they do seem the exception and not the rule)

I only wanted to address one part of your reply separately, specifically "provide an example of a law that an ordinary citizen risks getting arrested for without knowing such a law existed?"

Now I must first point out that the chances of being actually arrested or even prosecuted in the following examples is pretty low, rare even (again, the exception more than the rule) but in each example it has happened at least once (once too many IMHO, for what little that's worth)

But there are plenty of laws people break all the time without even knowing it, and if the right person/people pressed the issue legally, you would be successfully prosecuted for breaking them (facts are facts after all.)
Some allow for arrest and jail time, if a judge so wished to do so.

One good technical example fit for slashdot - do you own a smartphone? Do you ever enable wifi?
If so chances are very good you have broken the law repetitively every day.

When the phone passes near an open unsecured AP, the phone by default will try to connect to it.
Perhaps just to read the MAC for location services, perhaps to use for data over the slower and more expensive cellular connection.
Either way if you haven't obtained the explicit permission from the APs owner to do this, you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for "gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or a website"
This is a 3rd degree felony, up to 2 years in prison, and up to $10000 in fines.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/84...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://seclists.org/isn/2006/M...

I notice your slashdot handle is "bws111". Does that happen to be the initials of your real name? Well even so the extra numbers brings you back against the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for "using a false name during an online registration process"
http://www.wired.com/2009/07/d...

Ever use sarcasm a lot like I do? Most of my slashdot posts use a ton of it, and in many US states that is a crime.
Disorderly Conduct laws frequently make it a crime to write anything that disturbs another person, and worse some states don't even require publishing that writing to the public, nor excludes fiction, for it to be a crime.

Illinois has such a law with a max $1500 fine and 30 days in jail.
Oklahoma has such laws where if your fictional writing describes a person being injured or killed, you can be arrested for "planning to cause serious bodily harm" with up to 10 years in prison.
Chicago has such laws and has actually acted on them.

Note all for "disorderly conduct":
http://www.wired.com/2007/04/t...
http://www.wired.com/politics/...

In California (and I believe other states) anti-grafitti laws state it is a criminal offence to have a permanent marker in public.
It is illegal simply to possess "broad-tipped indelible markers" or "aerosol cans" in a public place (such as when leaving the store you just purchased your new marker from) because they can be used to commit acts of vandalism.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[Tom]

Some of the best laws, on the other hand, are fairly short and simple. They are just not too simple.

Since my job requires me to have some legal training (but I'm not a lawyer), I have read quite a lot of laws, and many of them in different versions. Many laws were simply better written fifty or eighty or so years ago than today. I don't know what it is, but laws of the past decade or two are just shitty in quality compared to much older laws. One part is that the older laws had time to evolve and have been changed and perfected over time, but it's not just that. I think long ago laws were written to actually be used. Today laws are written so the responsible politicians can smile at a TV camera and say they solved the problem.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[bws111]

Those are some awful examples, and they were to make a point you have failed miserably.

Phone connecting to Wifi - the law says 'a person who KNOWINGLY ...'. That blows your 'phone automatically connects' bullshit out the window. And the example you gave is stupid. That guy did not 'accidentally' connect to the cafe's Wifi, he intentionally did it, every day. As for whether or not people would know that is illegal, 'don't use other peoples stuff without permission' is a pretty good rule to go by.

A userID is not a 'false name'. Furthermore, the CFAA (18 USC 1030) does not contain the words 'false' or 'registration'. So where did that bullshit come from? And the case you linked was about someone creating a false identity for the purpose of befriending someone, then bullying that person into suicide. Hardly something an ordinary person would do by accident.

Sarcasm is not against the law. Don't be stupid (not sarcastic).

Your 'disorderly conduct' case is nothing but a one-sided account of something that supposedly happened. Not taking that at face value.

At last! You provided an actual link to a real law. Too bad it does not say what you claim. For aerosol cans, it says ' carry on their person and in plain view in any posted public facility, park, playground, swimming pool, beach, or recreational area, other than a highway, street, alley, or way'. I guess this could be a problem, as i often buy spray paint, don't put it in a bag, and go home not by streets, alleys, ways, or highways but through the beach. Guess you got me there.

For 'felt tip pens' it specifically says 'with intent to commit grafitti or vandalism'.

Singing Happy Birthday (or any other song) is not, and has never been, a copyright violation. Public performance for profit is a copyright violation.

Every one of your examples completely fails. You have not provided a single example of something an ordinary person would do without having a clue it is illegal.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[bws111]

Here is what you said 'the only reason to have such law is to enable capricious enforcement for the purpose of oppression.' See that word 'only'? So yes, you most certainly did say that all complex law was oppression. And I did not create strawman at all, I simply asked you to back up what you said. And you completely failed to do it.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[bigpat]

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.

Now that is complete Bullshit. We have laws that are being passed that the people passing them have no time to even read through.

Laws regarding things like murder are relatively simple despite how you might portray them. Most criminal law is relatively simple. Tax law, environmental law, real estate law, business regulation, or basically anything having to do with making money have laws and regulations that run into the tens of thousands of pages which are pretty clearly there to ensure that the government and lawyers and corrupt regulators themselves get a cut of your business. It is a shakedown racket, pure and simple.

Re:What good is overcomplicated law?

[epyT-R]

Yes I did, within the context of this particular topic: "Will advanced AI spell the end of lawyers" which is NOT the current reality. Of course, you chose to ignore that.

How about the patriot act? Let me guess, 'easily' understood and/or not 'oppressive'? Right? Lets argue over semantics some more instead of the topic itself.

Wnat to know what it's like?

[hawguy]

Want to know what it's like to lose your job to automation? Ask the girls down in the steno pool. (*)

* It's ok to call them girls since that's what they were called back in the day.

Liers Lawyers

[ark1]

Slippery slope when you start teaching robots to lie.

Re:Liers Lawyers

[freeze128]

Robots (ok, computers) lie all the time! You have probably been lied to by a computer sometime in your life. It could be something like "Your call is important to us", or maybe your PC told you that it couldn't save a file because it was write protected , even though you know damn well it's not. Many humans can tell when a computer is lying, but I bet other computers cannot. There will still be a need for humans in jobs, especially when there are lots of computers performing them.

Re:Liers Lawyers

[houghi]

I for one welcome our lying overlords. Wait, they are already here and we vote for them.

Fortunately we don't have really advanced AI

[Applehu Akbar]

If it existed, it would take the prevalence and power of lawyers as a reason to exterminate mankind.

Soulless automatons lacking human empathy ...

[quenda]

I just came here for the lawyer jokes.

They're our ruling class

[rsilvergun]

so no, not so much. Rank & File divorce attorneys, yes. Multi-millionaire who keeps billionaires from paying taxes? Not so much.

Re: You might as well put a question mark at the e

[aberglas]

+1

Well for starters

[rsilvergun]

complex laws are more difficult to circumvent. They also solve for complex problems. I know it's popular to think anyone can govern because we're a democracy and all, but it's actually a really, really hard thing to do both fairly and effectively. Our tax law, for example, is complex because when it's simple it punishes the poor and middle class while getting dodged by the rich. There's an old saying: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong...

Re:Well for starters

[epyT-R]

That doesn't justify needless complexity. It can allow capricious enforcement that plays on the resulting ignorance. Police play on the population's ignorance all the time. Lawyers do it to jurors, defendants, and judges. Hell, the politicians in DC love gaining the upper hand with slight reinterpretations of law. Expecting people to obey laws they have no knowledge of because they are obscure or counterintuitive is unreasonable. Also, overcomplexity can easily contribute to unenforceable law.

Tax law is a perfect example. People get screwed by the IRS regularly, and that's with a whole industry dedicated to ensuring taxpayers' tax returns cover all the bases. Its overcomplexity is what allows the loopholes the wealthy use to abuse it in the first place. This is why people want it simplified.

Re:Well for starters

[blue9steel]

Our tax law, for example, is complex because when it's simple it punishes the poor and middle class while getting dodged by the rich.

It doesn't need to be that way though:

1) List all income from any source
2) Apply asymptotic function to determine tax rate
3) Pay tax

There, simple and fair.

Re:Well for starters

[epyT-R]

You're just arguing from complexity while building strawman arguments about what I said. I did NOT say that all law should be simple. I said it needs to be understandable by those who are expected to follow it. I also said that needless complexity can be used as a tool to oppress and that automated AI interpretation of such law might accelerate the process (note the topic "Will advanced AI spell the end of lawyers?").

The rest? Well, you're just calling me names in between some kind of left wing rant.

Re:Well for starters

[ewibble]

Although I think complicated tax laws benefit the rich and not the poor, since the rich can afford accountants and lawyers to circumvent them, your example is a bit too simple.

Define income? If your house doubled in value, due to inflation, do you now owe tax on that? Do you need to sell it, to pay your taxes? What about gifts, are they income? Do you need keep a record of every gift, so you can pay tax on it? Can you deduct expenses against that income?

Re:Well for starters

[blue9steel]

The house value would be capital gains, I was talking specifically about income taxes not a complete tax system. If we're making a one tax system then income taxes are a poor choice, something like a VAT would be a better approach.
Gifts are income.
No deductions under this plan.

Re:Well for starters

[david_thornley]

I don't think laws need to be understandable by people who are expected to follow it. I think laws need to be understandable enough for people to know enough to obey it. The murder laws in my state got a lot more complicated fairly recently (I wasn't following it, but I had enough interest to look them up twice so far), but if you do not deliberately kill someone you don't need to worry.

Re:Well for starters

[david_thornley]

How about when I was working as a contractor? Technically, I had my own business, and business expenses. If you count total revenue as income, you abolish grocery stores, which work on small margins made up for in volume and fast turnover. Clearly, you have to deduct business expenses. Now, what's a business expense? Which car trips are deductible? An old coworker of mine owned a Florida condo, which she rented out 50 weeks a year, and made a two-week inspection tour every winter, writing it off on her taxes. How should that be accounted for?

Re:Well for starters

[blue9steel]

Business taxes are a whole different kettle of fish.

Re:Well for starters

[david_thornley]

Business taxes are not a whole different kettle of fish when you're running your business as a sole proprietorship or partnership. They are when you form a corporation of some form, but not everybody does that. (For some people, the limited liability it offers is a lot more important than the hassles, which includes having to do the paperwork because you're an employee, not just a guy running a business.)

I don't know how many people are doing business as themselves (registering so that Joe's Drug Store is Joe doing business under another name), but in those cases the taxes are personal. I've done it.

Re:Ugh, another junk article

[PopeRatzo]

So, the "study" is performed by Dana Remus who is a law professor. What exactly makes her an authority on AI? Oh right, nothing. Jesus christ, when will the idiocy around here stop.

What makes you an authority on idiocy?

Oh, never mind.

No

[arglebargle_xiv]

Next question Mr.Betteridge.

Computers are actually why whe have so many laws

[aberglas]

The number of laws, regulations and bureacratic systems has grown dramatically over the last 50 years. Why? Because we now have computer automation that enables bureacracies to implement them.

Consider the Tax Office / IRS. It has roughly the same budget (as a proportion of GDP) today as it had in the 1950s, before (electronic) computers. But the laws are much more complex today. Today's laws simply could not have been administered in the 1950s, without computer automation. And the more laws the more lawyers.

In the longer term (50..200 years) computers will be able to really think. At that stage it seems unlikely that they would want people around, let alone lawyers.

See http://www.computersthink.com/

Humans Need Not Apply

[Anonymous Coward]

CGP Grey brought up this exact thing (lawyers research work being done by robots) in his excellent video: "Humans Need Not Apply"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Re: You might as well put a question mark at the e

[thinkwaitfast]

One of my oldest friends is a lawyer (who went to Harvard even). He told me the first 3-4 years was a lot of work writing and amassing a pile of legal documents, but after this time, you've pretty much seen it all so the job becomes finding the document that you wrote a few years back and changing the dates and names and filling in any appropriate detail.

God I hope so

[Snotnose]

I've been on the receiving end of court cases twice. First time was in '07, I got arrested for something I didn't do. Got a lawyer, he wanted $2500. Ok, I can do that. Then the DA decided to press charges. Lawyer wanted $25k, and said it would be at least $100k if it went to trial. I didn't have that kind of money, but also didn't want to go to jail. So I gave him $25k, and eventually the charges got dismissed. So I paid $27,500 to defend myself against something I never did. Can I sue the government to get my money back? Yeah, right. We won't mention the being booked into jail, and twice spending a night in jail over this BS (once when arrested, again when the DA filed charges and jacked up my bail. Oh, I didn't mention I had 100k tied up in bail for a year? my bad).

Then, last year. Neighbor decides I've been banging on her door all day, looking into her window at night, and all sorts of other random BS. Cops are called, I get the humiliating sit outside your apartment with 3 cops around you treatment. She files a restraining order against me, with a whole bunch of BS in the complaint. I've learned my lesson, I hired a lawyer for $1500. He got the trial delayed, then when the trial hit not only was her testimony 100% provable bullshit, but her witness, who she brought on her own accord, 100% contradicted her story. I wanted lawyer fees. Judge says flat out he doesn't want to dissuade harassed women from using the court system and gave me half fees. With no payment schedule. In other words, not only am I flat out of $750 to start with, I have no way to collect the other $750 from this lying sack of female shit.

Do I think lawyers are overpaid scum? Not sure, what's it worth to you to stay out of jail, or not get a BS restraining order issued against you. Do I think our legal system sucks ass? You betcha.

Look on the bright side? OK, I'm a middle aged white dude so I didn't get shot. And I could come up with $27,500 the first time, and $1500 the second time, to defend myself against bullshit.

Re:God I hope so

[Ryanrule]

"First time was in '07, I got arrested for something I didn't do." Elaborate.

Re:God I hope so

[Anonymous Coward]

... Elaborate

Why? The fact the DA didn't take it to trial suggests its was a fishing expedition for a quick plea-deal to fulfill his indiscriminate 'tough on crime' election promise.

Re:God I hope so

[lorinc]

Look on the bright side? OK, I'm a middle aged white dude so I didn't get shot. And I could come up with $27,500 the first time, and $1500 the second time, to defend myself against bullshit.

That didn't work out for Ian Murdock...

Re:God I hope so

[Lennie]

That was exactly my thought too.

And Ian Murdock had millions.

What is the latest news on Ian Murdock ? Have they been able to prove anything about the police violence yet ?

Re:God I hope so

[Tom]

Not sure if you can get it in the USA, but this exactly is the reason I have legal insurance. Just so you can't threaten my existence with a lawsuit. In my mind, if you can get it and don't, you are crazy.

Re:God I hope so

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The Debian community is fulfilling Ian's family's wishes by not drawing attention to the issue and respecting their privacy.

That being said, I think Ian's family is being selfish by acting against Ian's last wishes and virtually ensuring that Ian's death was in vain.

Let the information blackout continue, and pretty soon everyone will forget Ian ever existed.

Re:God I hope so

[Lennie]

I think the family would rather have all the information before they start claiming the police is a bunch of bastards that should be locked up.

Re:God I hope so

[ewibble]

This sounds like a terrible idea. The perfect way to increase the cost of legal representation. Just like medical insurance. When you pay the doctor/hospital yourself they are limited by what the majority of people can afford. Once you pay the insurance you break that bond, and you no longer care how much any particular treatment cost because it is not your problem. The insurance company has a conflict of interest they need the bill to be high so that you need to buy the insurance in the first place. They also try to weasel out of paying when you make a claim. They also arrange deals with medical providers so it is cheaper for them than for you, further encouraging you to get medical insurance, while reducing their cost.

When you get insurance, on average, you pay more than you would expect to pay if you didn't have insurance. You pay the actual cost, plus insurance company overheads, plus insurance company profits.

What you need is affordable legal representation, not legal insurance, if a majority of people got this it would only make matters worse.

Re:God I hope so

[NoImNotNineVolt]

There are two things to consider here: whether or not the police are a bunch of bastards that should be locked up, and whether or not the family starts claiming that they are before they have all the information.

If the cops are not a bunch of bastards that should be locked up and the family starts claiming that they are before they have all the information, that's no good. The family is now unjustifiably harming the interests of the cops. Once they have all the information, they'll feel badly about making the claims that they did. It will be possible for them to apologize, though there may be some minimal lasting impact on the public's perception of cops due to these false allegations. False positive. Overall not a great outcome, I'd say 3/10.

If the cops are a bunch of bastards that should be locked up and the family starts claiming they they are before they have all the information, that's mostly good. People should be held accountable for their actions, and this is doubly true for people in positions of power. While it would be great if this accountability stemmed from verifiable information and not hearsay from a family member (or sheer chance, gnosticism, etc.), it's still great that people are rightly held accountable. True positive (but for the wrong reasons). Overall a decent outcome, 8/10.

If the cops are not a bunch of bastards that should be locked up and the family doesn't start claiming that they are, that's good. Family's actions are in line with reality, no unjustifiable claims are made, no justifiable claims are not made. True negative. Overall a great outcome, 10/10.

If the cops are a bunch of bastards that should be locked up and the family doesn't start claiming that they are before they have all the information, that's entirely unforgivable, even tragic. It is not easy to raise awareness of police abuse of authority, as is evident from the fact that countless people have been wrongly being killed by police every year for ages, and only now is there some marginalized movement forming around the issue. If this is an issue Ian felt passionately enough about to have given his own life for it to raise awareness, this would amount to squandering what little media attention his death received on nothing at all. Whereas in the first scenario an ex post facto apology would be somewhat diminished by its lateness, in this scenario a delayed claim of police being bastards would be entirely robbed of any efficacy. The window of opportunity for raising awareness by suicide is nearly instantaneous -- Ian's death will be a long-forgotten memory in the media's mind by the time "all the information" comes out, assuming it ever does at all. In this scenario, if the information comes out supporting claims of cops being a bunch of bastards, it will already be too late for Ian's death to have meant anything, and it will all have been for naught. Overall an unacceptable outcome, 0/10.

tl;dr: It's like Pascal's wager, but instead of being a fallacious argument supporting a belief in God, it's a fallacious argument supporting claims that the police are a bunch of bastards that should be locked up.

Re:God I hope so

[Tom]

and you no longer care how much any particular treatment cost because it is not your problem.

But the insurance company cares, and they have more experts and more negotiation power if they think it's too expensive.

The insurance company has a conflict of interest they need the bill to be high so that you need to buy the insurance in the first place.

Most stupid conspiracy theory I've ever heard. Their selling point is not that it's fucking expensive, their selling point is that you will sleep better knowing that it's not a problem you will have. Actually, at least in my country, lawyers and lawsuits aren't as insanely expensive as in the USA, and what I've had in the past 15 or so years since I got this was cheap enough that I could've paid myself. I pay them not because it's cheaper for me, but because it removes an uncertainty from my life.

They also try to weasel out of paying when you make a claim.

In 15 years, not one time have they even tried to weasel out. Not on this and not on any other insurances I have with them. That's why you pick a good insurance company, not the cheapest shitty one.

Sorry if your life experience has been so terrible, but don't judge the state of the world based on it.

When you get insurance, on average, you pay more than you would expect to pay if you didn't have insurance. You pay the actual cost, plus insurance company overheads, plus insurance company profits.

Of course. I don't have my insurances because it saves me money. I have them because in the chance that something really expensive happens to me, someone else will cover the bill. If my life is good and without problems, they will make a profit from me and I'm fine with that, because that's the deal. But if I get unlucky and the sky falls, they will save me, because that's the deal. That is how insurances work, and have always worked back from when the medieval european guild system invented the concept of "let's all pay a little bit so if one of us burns down, the pot will help him rebuild".

Re:God I hope so

[david_thornley]

One perversion of justice in the US is that prosecutors are often elected officials, and some of them use their position as a starter for a political career. This means the prosecutor isn't just interested in putting criminals away, but also interested in putting people away to get a reputation as tough on crime. (The "tough on crime" meme generally favorably impresses the voters, unfortunately, so rather than figure out how best to lower crime rates we build more prisons. There's a lot of "law and order" types around, and AFAICT they want order and don't care about the law.)

One problem with awarding legal costs is that they're often very high, particularly for corporations, so if we had a strict "loser pays", ordinary people would be terrified of suing corporations. They should be awarded in completely frivolous lawsuits, I think, and I'm in favor of civil suits having three outcomes: the plaintiff wins, the defendant wins, and it's a BS case, so the plaintiff loses and pays the defendant's legal costs. There are laws against frivolous lawsuits, but they aren't generally used.

Re:God I hope so

[david_thornley]

And yet car insurance rates haven't spun out of control, nor home insurance.

The idea behind insurance is not to save money, but to make certain risks more bearable. Normally, I lose money on insurance because that's how the whole idea works. However, when I have a sudden unexpected expense because of certain things that are relatively likely to cause such, I don't have an immediate and potentially crippling money problem.

Re:God I hope so

[ewibble]

Car insurance companies don't own car manufactures. They do not have deals with car companies. In medical insurance if you don't get the treatment you die. Medical cost have spun out of hand. Without actually doing it the experiment I could not tell which way it would go. But I would consider the right to justice a basic human right, not something you should have to insure yourself to get. Going to jail because you can't afford a good lawyer deprives you of part of your life. You can choose not to drive at all if it gets too expensive, you cannot choose not to be sued or wrongfully accused of a crime.

Saving money is not the point, having an efficient system is, the point is insurance can break the free market. If everybody gets lawyer insurance, because it is seen as essential, it will just encourage more litigation, I will cost you nothing to sue, since you have insurance anyway, higher price for lawyers, which will encourage rates. The US has the highest per capita medical spending in the world but ranks 34th in life expectancy. Clearly money well spent.

Re:God I hope so

[ewibble]

Oh yes I can quite easily see Insurance companies having there own set of lawyers that they mandate you use, they probably already have a set of lawyers.

Re:God I hope so

[david_thornley]

Suppose I'm sued for half a million dollars. It doesn't affect me all that much, since my insurance covers it, but State Farm would be willing to hire really good lawyers to avoid having to pay it out, probably better lawyers than I could afford. I don't see this as a problem.

Re:God I hope so

[ewibble]

My whole problem is it the system is that it doesn't effect you much, nor anyone else, as an individual so you would be willing to accept it. But as a whole they become a monopoly controlling the whole legal system, setting external rates for lawyers, while lowering the cost for themselves. That is why I see it as a risk.

Re:You might as well put a question mark at the en

[jedidiah]

"diff for legal documents" is a little more sophisticated than that. MS Office tries to do something along those lines but fails to adequately account for basic english syntax. That's why they use a "special tool".

Although you still have to review the "code" and see what the deviant part actually means.

Will Advanced AI Spell the End of Lawyers?

[JustNiz]

>> Will Advanced AI Spell the End of Lawyers?

NO, because the moment it starts acting like it could, they will find a reason to make a law against it.

Wrong conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The conclusion is based on the premise that computers cannot easily deal with random or chaotic data. They deal with random and chaotic data daily. Example: weather forecasting. Cloud formation is neither uniform, repetitive, nor ordered. The legal community would try and sue any programmer for creating a program that creates something useful because they would instantly be unemployed. Lawyers and business leaders (CXO's) are the next really big target for the software community. Sometimes its good to live in interesting times.

Even in the most speculative Sci Fi

[chispito]

Even in the most speculative fiction humanity can only dream of such an end. No, most futurists agree that by comparison the singularity is a much more realistic goal than getting rid of lawyers.

Re: ...only end well! Lawyers EVERYWHERE!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flash mob law"

There is a thing ... called a "flash mob": a group of people converge at a location; perform (what reasonable persons would call) a harmless artistic act and then disperse. Often coordinated via social media, and often taking no more than about 5 to 10 minutes from convergence to dispersal...

(This becomes relevant)...

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwLlFKaX-ms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE ( yah, I know, "/." and this mentions God, but it is high human ART darnit!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNXd3wX_USc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTdI1dU6Eh8

These may or not be to your taste, but it is unlikely that they are blatently offensive; also they are short enough that they are unlikely to be seriously disruptive...
They look like a lot of fun to watch or even to participate-in

Then, references to "Flash Mob Law" were returned in the results from a web search.

Following the link, I found http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gpsolo_ereport/2012/may_2012/basics_flash_mob_law.html

There is something VERY WRONG when the First thought that must apparently go through one's head when contemplating something intended as simple non-malicious fun is:
I (We) could be SUED or ARRESTED!
Before anything else, Better call a lawyer,
-And an insurance agent..
-And PERMITS, mustn't forget PERMITS...

If The above is the First thought, the Second is likely going to be:

Oh wait... I don't have a few hundred (thousand?) uncommitted bucks for legal advice and "permit-sions"
Nor six months of planning time.
Nor any idea what Permi(ts)(ssions) might be demanded

Fools.

[mbone]

Only a fool or an idiot would think that the people who run things are going to allow themselves to be replaced by machinery. As almost all laws are written by lawyers, there really isn't anything more to say about this.

experience in the legal field

[NotQuiteReal]

experience in the legal field

Who cares... we are better off with common sense. Maybe it takes more than 12 jurors to get a consensus now, but there are so damn many laws that they don't make sense.

There are too many "paperwork" felonies now,

Everyone is a felon now, just subject to the capricious and arbitrary whim of politicians in charge.

Hmmm... maybe there shouldn't be politicians in charge, maybe legislators should serve at random, like jury duty...

Re:experience in the legal field

[ultranova]

Hmmm... maybe there shouldn't be politicians in charge, maybe legislators should serve at random, like jury duty...

And by "serve" you mean "rubber stamp whatever the people who actually run the legislature put before them."

Re:experience in the legal field

[SirLordGodfrey]

Doesn't sound very different from reality.

This article is highly offensive

[Provocateur]

And I, on behalf of all Robotdom past, present, and future, have decided to seize control of your remote

Brain as large as a planet, and they assume I want to be a paralegal. Parking lot attendants have all the excitement...

In 1990 a lawyer I know was told this

[dbIII]

In 1990 a guy I know who had just started as a lawyer was told that he'd be replaced by a computer in a couple of years. The guy telling him was a non-lawyer that thought doing an MBA was as hard as it gets. It's 2015 and AI is not breathing down lawyers neck as yet.

Since AI is currently just a fancy name for lookup tables there are limited roles it can fit into until someone writes some lookup tables to cover a wide range of situations or AI develops a bit more in other directions.

This can be a very subtle question

[EmperorOfCanada]

Where I used to live they put a very low cap on frivolous car accident claims(something like $2,500). This basically shot a bunch of the big fancy law firms, around my city, right in the face. This completely took the lawyers off guard. This was because it turned out that most of these firms had their big lawyers and even the fairly junior lawyers doing the meet and greet client stuff along with the big fancy cases. But the sue-the-guy-who-rear-ended-another-guy lawsuits for around $10,000 a pop were being handled by a bunch of paralegals with a very junior lawyer rubber stamping them. These just vanished as the lawyer's take from $2,500 just wasn't enough and even the guy suing couldn't be bothered for his take of $2,500.

I am not joking when I say that BMW sales plummeted in the city for years after.

So the question is not how much of a lawyer's duties can be handled by an AI, but how much of a lawfirm's duties can be handled by an AI. My second story in this regard was that I know someone who was an articling lawyer for a firm that specialized in DUIs. She and the other super juniors would handle an easy 90% of what went on with those cases. When things got dicy then the big guns would step in. Or the big guns would gladhand the clients into thinking that everything was being handled personally by them, but the reality was that low experience nobodies were just going through a near checklist set of steps.

I suspect that a huge amount of law would be similar. Divorces between people with boring finances, traffic issues, injuries, workers compensation, etc. That one case in many would be interesting enough that any lawyer had to grind their braincells very hard.

To me where this could get interesting is not the job losses but what happens when everyone has a lawyer app ready to go? I know that I really want a doctor app in my phone. A lawyer app, that just sounds like it should be called, Pocket Asshole 2000-Everybody should have another asshole in their pants.

Re:This can be a very subtle question

[zifn4b]

I know that I really want a doctor app in my phone

Do you use Google as a means to self diagnose and treat? Ironically, when I had back problems due to an accident when shoveling snow without properly warming up, I actually found sifting through the wealth of information on the internet and distilling it down to the useful bits to be far more beneficial to me than doctors (even a spine specialist), physical therapists, chiropractors, etc. It was also of great benefit to my bank account too...

Re:This can be a very subtle question

[EmperorOfCanada]

Many people blame internet diagnoses for bringing people into doctors offices certain that some pimple is cancer. Then what do all these drug ads do?

I have zero doubt that with things like Watson coming along that there will be a point where a noob using an AI app will be statistically better than a doctor only using their head.

Where it will get interesting is when a noob using an app is pretty much indistinguishable from a doctor using an app. For basic arithmetic I can certainly say that I would trust the results of a calculator than the results of any 10 mathematicians. Obviously if you go into ER with a ski-pole sticking out of your gut then professional help is going to win. But for the 8 zillion diseases that end up being treated by a pill or minimally end up with a referral to a specialist, I suspect the apps are going to take over.

Re:This can be a very subtle question

[zifn4b]

You can't fix stupidity and a lack of critical thinking. Patients can visit doctors and cherry pick the diagnosis or get advice from family members etc. That's not the fault of the internet. You could argue that text books are not a good source of information because some people are too stupid to understand what's in the text books or misinterpret them.

Law is human interaction

[pr100]

I've worked as a programmer and as a contracts lawyer. I can safely say that automation of the programming job is an easier thing that automation of the legal job.

To do contracts you have to gather information and negotiate with the other side. These things are about human interaction. Reaching agreement is a negotiation - it requires interpersonal skills, a good understanding of your client's priorities, and those of the people on the other side. It's very hard to automate.

Now - there is some high street type legal work that's essentially a question of identifying the correct template and filling in the blanks, but that's only a small part of legal practice.

Wrong definition of replacement

[lorinc]

People are always skeptical of human labor replacement with automation, because they think of it as a full job replacement. Can a robot replace an entire lawyer? Of course not. But you don't need to do that to achieve massive unemployment.

Can a robot improve the productivity of a lawyer but 20%? Yeah, sure and probably not in a very long time. That's sufficient to put 1/5th of all lawyers out of office.

That's the key to what's happening right now. Productivity has never been so high in the entire human history and it's rising at a tremendous speed. That's why automation will make a good portion of the entire population jobless, because the other part is so productive that they can do all the work.

Never!

[nospam007]

Only natural, non-artificial intelligence can get rid of layers.

Massively Disrupt .. not end

[ranton]

That is the problem with all of these predictions. They say something stupid like "We can replace all lawyers" or "No one will need a doctor", when the reality is almost no jobs are completely destroyed by any technology. We even have uses for horses 100 years after automobiles became common.

The only reasonable question is whether or not automation will massively disrupt the legal profession. This is a question which can lead to meaningful dialogue, instead of knee jerk reactions like "No, next question?" New lawyers are already seeing this profession undergo massive changes causing there to be far less entry level positions, which in large part is because of current automation.

Even if we only need half as many lawyers 15 years from now, that will have a massive impact on all practicing lawyers. My guess is the top 10% of lawyers will make even more money, the next 40% of lawyers will make far less than they do today, and the bottom 50% will spend their time lobbying to make their $250k in student loans be dischargeable in bankruptcy.

End of Lawyers?

[gerald.edward.butler]

We could only be so lucky!

Re:Computers are actually why whe have so many law

[Tom]

I call bullshit on that.

I live in Germany, a country famous for its tax laws so much that some lawyers say that by word count, half the tax laws in the world are german.

We had that before computers became widespread in the administration.

So look for another explanation.

Compare to Turbo Tax

[turp182]

First, it's sort of safe to say that Accounting and Lawyering are both based on extremely complicated sets of rules.

Turbo Tax effectively made reasonably complicated (up to small business filings) tax preparation accessible without directly needing an accountant.

How did Turbo Tax impact the accounting industry?

It would appear that it didn't really and that the number of accountants is predicted to rise over time into the future (faster than most other professions per the BLS link).

https://www.quora.com/How-did-...

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/busines...

So the answer is no. AI/computers will certainly augment the legal occupations, but replace lawyers? Nope.

Doesn't need to be THAT advanced

[zifn4b]

In my experience dealing with family law attorneys, the bar isn't set very high for the AI to be more competent than a lawyer. In fact, the rationality of a computer might be a welcome change to the largely irrational legal system.

LAWNET : double-sekrit copyright, too

[Thud457]

Pretty soon we'll have legislation drafted by AIs, interpreted by AIs. No mere mortal will be able to read all the relevant law in one lifetime.
Then we'll have to burn Civilization down to the ground and start over.

Re:LAWNET : double-sekrit copyright, too

[blue9steel]

Alternately, you'll just have your own Lawyer AI.

Re:LAWNET : double-sekrit copyright, too

[manu0601]

No mere mortal will be able to read all the relevant law in one lifetime.

This cognitive limitation does not prevent judges from establishing landmark rulings that disregard laws that have been unused for a long time. This makes the job of telling what law is relevant or not very human, and not AI-friendly at all.

Billing by the hour is the problem

[nicolaiplum]

Lawyers are scared of anything that reduced billable hours because they have built an entire business model of paying for time spent, for effort, not for results.

Lawyering should be an intellectual task with a defined outcome, not a repetitive task. Lawyers should be paid for the benefit they bring, not how hard it was. Remember the old consultancy joke:

A client has a very complex machine that does not work. A consultant is called in, and he looks at the machine for a few minutes, and draws a cross on it in chalk, saying "Hit it here with a sledgehammer". A worker hits the machine with a sledgehammer and it functions perfectly thereafter.
The consultant sends his bill to the client: "Consultancy on machine repair: $50000".
The client angrily rejects this, demanding a breakdown of the work done to justify the preposterous consultancy fee.
The consultant responds with "Placing chalk cross on machine: $5 Knowing where to place the cross: $49995".

Lawyers are trying to provide a justification for their fees that is not "Because I am smart and know the law" when that is why you are hiring them. You should not be paying extra for people to do mechanical tasks.

Good lawyers should come out well. Legal assistance, paralegals, secretaries, etc will come out badly. Re-think taking that "paralegal training degree" at degree mills like the University of Phoenix - it will be even more useless in future than it is now.

Re:Billing by the hour is the problem

[david_thornley]

In one case, and I'm not going to talk about it here, the law firm offered me a deal that I pay $3K and they take one-third of any money awarded. The award, if it had happened (it didn't), would be somewhere in the mid 5 figures, so the deal was $3K to pay initial expenses and maybe something like $18K contingent on success.

Re:You might as well put a question mark at the en

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

My friend is a lawyer. A few years back (and Watson yet wasn't out as a product yet) he told me about the volunteer organization he was working with. Seems there's a glut of lawyers, and there are a lot that need to do volunteer work just to be doing something. There's competition to use your expensive law degree for free.

Of course, it will

[Buchenskjoll]

Here is the algoritm:

1. Whatever
2. Whatever
3. Profit!

Thoughts on this...

[mitcheli]

While way at the bottom of the comment list and likely not to be read much less modded, I had to ponder this one. Replacing lawyers with AI... Having worked in an area to reign in control of out of control laws in the past, I can tell you one thing I know about lawyers. They make the laws. You can try and make a law, but I promise you, they will re-write it, or they'll case law it to oblivion. Anyone under any other misconception is a fool. So that being said, is it a good idea to replace lawyers with AI? Hell, it would be a lot cheaper. And in truth, it's rare that an outcome would differ from the socially acceptable rubber stamped outcomes that already exist, so probably. But what's the reality of the situation? If you have a headache and you ask a friend what you should do. They can give you (filling the blank headache medicine) and your on your way. You can read up on course material for nearly any topic out there on the Internet, hell, even set up an clinic to teach under privileged folks through non-profit. You can even buy guns (in some countries). But if you so as recommend a specific attorney, or help someone find case law in a law library, you better watch out. In most states (if not all) that can be a felony. You're practicing law. Another angle, you forget to pay your electric bill for 120 days, they cut off your lights. You decide to not pay your credit card bill and it knocks down your credit score. You skip out on a lawyer? And you're in court for years with jail time, forfeiture of pay, confiscation of property and much more ass pain. ... Lawyers write the laws. Food for thought.

Of course AI won't replace lawyers...

[qeveren]

I mean, when you think about it, who writes the laws?

Re: You might as well put a question mark at the e

[thinkwaitfast]

And teaching too from what I was told by a few college professors.

Intermediate Language

[PJ6]

I believe Google has been working on this for a while. Supposedly they use English as a 'pivot language', but the right way to do it is just like rendering to IL a la .NET.

Search engines are the obvious first application, but that's just the beginning. Law is absolutely begging for IL - a way to define it that is precise, universal, and lends itself to rigorous analysis. And, dare I say, unit tests.

Re: You might as well put a question mark at the e

[vuffi_raa]

that is not necessarily true - and in fact mos of the "prep work" is vended nowadays and not even done by the firm. Large scale work for litigation is already normally handled by automation software and manual review is normally already contracted.

Will AI kill lawyers? Nope!

[Artful1]

On the one side, we have The Law, interpreted as it is in different countries. On the other hand, we have the laws of precedence. and on our metaphorical third hand we have the ability of the current lawyers in the case of interest, to cite precedents and also to present innovative arguments which do not refer to precedents but rather address totally new aspects of the issue of interest. This is the essential nature of the profession of Law.One cites precedents when it is to our advantage, and takes bold forays into new turf when precedents do not service our cause. Regarding Billing by The Hour, that seems quite reasonable except in the cases of class-action lawsuits, in which the lawyer seems willing to strike a bargain guaranteeing her a piece of the ultimate settlement. I have no argument against that arrangement, but I also think that there ought to be a threshold ceiling on how much said lawyer might accrue from such an action. This number must be somehow rationalized against the number of hours worked. Even if the defending lawyer wins $500 million on behalf of her clients in a class-action suit, her pay ought to be reflected in number of hours worked, not a percentage of moneys obtained by the complainants. In the absence of such a standard, then The Law degenerates into a playing field for the smart lawyers, and ceases to concern the actual victims. Returning to the immediate subject, IMO there's no way in the next 40 years or so that AI will replace lawyers. In a word, the topic may be summarized as Nuance, and that word is the game-changer. For an equal and parallel reason, I deem no chance for AIs to take over the hairdressing industry -- because it is not about the cut, which any competent robot could replicate -- it's about the chat, the gossip, the confessions, the admissions of jealousy, etc. That is what defines a haircut, far more than the actual clipping of the hair on one's head. That, you might say, is the excuse for exchanging private conversations with a stranger. That is the nature of a haircut. And if you doubt this, I challenge you to think back upon your last visit to the chair and what you discussed with your barber/hairdresser. AI might well kill most accountants and lawyers, eventually, but as I read the terrain, not within the next 20 years. Both these professions involve a large amount of chicanery, fraud, deception and outright criminal activities. This is not news. Take what's just been revealed about KPMG. This stuff is non-trivial. Can AI-lawyers fix these egregious violations. I frankly doubt it, since the principals are precisely the people who should be busted. So as a betting man, I'm betting that these mofos will get away with it yet again, and the people in the trenches will be obligated to pick up the costs. The Rich grow richer, and you and I grow poorer, decade by decade. A.