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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."
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."
You need to start with robot jurors.
Gently reply
Great! We could sue people as fast as software can file claims. I smell the Baby Cooper Dollar Bill in the making.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
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!
lawyers will pass laws restricting that.
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.
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.
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/...
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.
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?)
The lawyers would sue!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
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.
Slippery slope when you start teaching robots to lie.
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.
If it existed, it would take the prevalence and power of lawyers as a reason to exterminate mankind.
I just came here for the lawyer jokes.
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/
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
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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Isn't he Chekov's little brother?
Star Trek TOS fail. Chekov didn't have a brother.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
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...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
We'll make great pets
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.
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.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke