Artificial Intelligence Closes In On the Work of Junior Lawyers (ft.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Financial Times article: After more than five years at a leading City law firm, Daniel van Binsbergen quit his job as a solicitor to found Lexoo, a digital start-up for legal services in the fledgling "lawtech" sector. Mr Van Binsbergen says he is one of many. "The number of lawyers who have been leaving to go to start-ups has skyrocketed compared to 15 years ago," he estimates. Many are abandoning traditional firms to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities or join in-house teams, as the once-unthinkable idea of routine corporate legal work as an automated task becomes reality (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). Law firms, which tend to be owned by partners, have been slow to adopt technology. Their traditional and profitable model involves many low-paid legal staff doing most of the routine work, while a handful of equity partners earn about 1m pound ($1.30m) a year. But since the 2008 financial crisis, their business model has come under pressure as companies cut spending on legal services, and technology replicated the repetitive tasks that lower-level lawyers at the start of their careers had worked on in the past. [...] "We get AI to do a bunch of things cheaply, efficiently and accurately -- which is most important," says Wendy Miller, partner and co-head of real estate disputes at BLP. "It leaves lawyers to do the interesting stuff."

Comments

This is gonna get real ugly

[rsilvergun]

Lawyers are cheap to train but the degrees are expensive. That's made them highly desirable for schools. My Kid's in Nursing and the average GPA of a kid admitted into the undergrad program (e.g. third year classes) is 3.9. If she wanted to get into Law School it'd be much easier.

So we've got schools turning out lawyers left and right and making a surplus. Meanwhile we're putting them out of work. And just 'cause it's cheap doesn't mean the kids get a discount, so they're in debt up to their ears. That's a recipe for a lot of desperate sue happy lawyers who won't care much if they get disbarred since the degree's worthless anyway.

This folks is why socialists don't want to abandon people. When you do that they turn desperate and there's all sorts of nasty consequences. I guess we can use oppression to take 'em down a notch, but thing is unless you're part of the ruling class you're gonna get caught in the crossfire...

Re:Maybe AI is really nearly here

[ShanghaiBill]

AI is going to get rid of lawyers? I suddenly feel far more welcoming and accepting of this AI takeover.

Be careful what you wish for. The tech will make lawsuits cheaper to file, and may result in a lot more frivolous legal actions. The system will be even more distorted toward big corps which will have access to legal automation, and against small firms and individuals. This will make it more difficult than ever to try to use the courts pro per, without paying a law firm.