Law & Technology Beyond 2020

Technology is developing and adapting so fast, that there is a distinct challenge to adapt with the new tools & systems, embrace the change; or risk getting flattened by the tidal wave of progress & technological advancement. Nowhere is this more evident, that within the legal office. With advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analysis and case research; if your law firm does not adopt new technology, others will.

Over the last 20 years, the internet has changed the way many of us work and do business. some more recent, mainstream changes in business technology include have cloud computing with blockchain technology. Cloud computing on third-party servers has allowed businesses of any size to move operations onto third-party servers – giving quick expansion and mobility within the problem of downtime or data loss.

Technology has also allowed people to stay in touch easier, with communication software such as video chat experiencing a huge rise in uptake & utilisation during the COVID-19 pandemic and VPNs allowing people to access their employer’s computer network from home.

Legal Tech is a whole industry in its own right. In 2016, there was estimated to be 200 legal tech startups in the world, now there are thousands. So what can we expect to see in the 2020s?

Back Office Technology

An emerging trend for legal companies is to employ virtual staff. Thanks to the 2020 pandemic and adoption of remote working, this is likely to continue to grow in the future. Virtual receptionists and virtual assistants can be hired for a fraction of the price of full-time employees and without any of the administrative red tape related to employee benefits, pensions, contracts etc.

A high-quality virtual receptionist will perform a very similar job to a full time, in-house hire. With a dedicated service from a provider such as Moneypenny, your receptionist will spend time learning about your business, what it does and who the staff are. Clients will typically not be able to tell that the receptionist is not based in your office. The receptionist can be updated via a phone app, so you can tell him or her that you do not want to be disturbed, which will allow you to get on with the work at hand, without having to worry about missing any important calls.

You can hire virtual assistants (VA) to write copy for your website’s blog. For example, go to the Cult of Copy Facebook page and you can hire American or British writers for a very reasonable fee. You can also hire copywriters off UpWork or PeoplePerHour but this will typically be at a higher rate per article.

Virtual Assistants can be used for repetitive jobs and low-skilled jobs such as internet research, making lists, booking travel arrangements. Before hiring a VA, have a conversation with him/her, asking general questions such as – “what do you like to do at the weekends” – just general small talk to make sure that they can communicate well in written English, and set them a test assignment.

Going paperless is also another emerging trend. Filing, law firms are paper-churning machines and it’s rare to meet a paralegal, secretary or any other legal employee to enjoy filing. Going paperless is a great alternative. Some courts are even requiring e-documents in specific states. Going paperless can reduce overheads and free up valuable time for staff to be doing new things.

To go paperless, you will need a good quality scanner, a cloud-based service and a pdf editor. More information about switching to paperless in this blog post.

AI & Accessibility

We are now seeing the emergence of some systems that can take on some of the more tedious jobs that would normally be carried out by a qualified lawyer, costing clients thousands of dollars. For example, legal research, document analysis and document drafting can all be carried out by software. The ever-improving and evolving ability of software and A.I programs to deal with documents frees up time for lawyers and reduces costs for clients.

The majority of people who need a lawyer, can’t afford one. The United Nations estimated in 2017, that 4 billion around the world people don’t have legitimate legal rights, and despite having one of the highest number of lawyers per capita around 80% of the United States population does not have access to legal services.

It might be possible to change this issue in the future. Lawtech&RegTech are new technologies that use AI and blockchain, that may allow lawyers to deliver services to more people, more efficiently. These apps are available on different devices and can help people by answering their legal questions.

Many of the typical questions that people want to ask a lawyer are crucial & important but also very frequent and can easily be answered by an AI bot. everything from custody laws to refugees making asylum claims. What's more, with the advances in voice recognition technology, these services should soon be available to the millions of people around the world who are unable to read or write.

Legal AI for Case Research

According to Andrew Arruda’s Ted Talk, legal research fees represent around 20% of a lawyer's time. With lawyers typically unable to take on a case without first doing relevant and specific research, fees mount up before a client has even been to court.

Lawyers spend hundreds of dollars per month for access to various databases, to endure a clunky inefficient process of trawling through potentially thousands of database results.

With the use of AI, however, thousands of pages per second can be analysed and categorised for lawyers, making the process incredibly fast and efficient. This, in turn, makes the services of a lawyer, more affordable.

As more time goes on, AI will only get more powerful and more efficient.

The general process of researching any documents with AI normally looks like this:

Stage 1 – Conversion – opens file in its native format e.g. .doc, .pdf, or xls

Stage 2 – Searchability

2a – Text Extraction - text is extracted, indexed & made searchable

2b – metadata extraction – e.g. for an email – date, email from, to, cc. for a webpage it code be meta-titles and other code or markup

2c – Deduplication – this process gets rid of any duplication and makes each document unique

Stage 3 – training

Training typically involves a human review of the results, feedback and if necessary a re-run of the process.

In the years to come, the AI will perform highly effectively ‘out of the box’ and will need training only to fine-tune its abilities.

Legal Dispute Outcome Predictions

AI is capable of analysing all of the cases in a local area and take into account dozens of variables including the judge, counsel, the crime or dispute etc. AI can also run through unstructured data, extract the relevant information and convert it into structured data that can be compared and contrasted across different cases and processes.

The inclusion of AI in a legal process can also change the format of the process itself. For example, if a legal client need help to classify a new worker for tax purposes – as an employee or a contractor – then for AI purposes, the client may be asked to fill in a questionnaire. This questionnaire puts the information in a format that can be understood by the AI, essentially putting it in a structured format. The AI would then be able to analyse the data, refer back to its database of past cases and give the client a prediction of what a court would likely decide.

AI Judges – Only in Estonia

Many judges can be subjective, whether they realise it or not. All judges think differently about cases, whereas AI can be completely objective. ROSS Intelligence is the first AI lawyer, that collects and analysis cases. They are concerns that AI can not truly understand individual cases and circumstances that are unique.

For example, if someone is living in poverty and literally has no food or money to feed his or her child; a parent may be forced to steal food. Would an AI judge sentence the parent in the same manner that a petty thief might be sentenced?

However, on the flip side, many cases throughout history have been unfairly affected by human prejudice. For example, during the Civil Rights era in the United States, there were many wrongful convictions by all-white juries. With an AI judge, there would be no prejudice and wrongful convictions may be less likely.

China has been trialling ‘cyber court’ in provinces such as Hangzhou, with the aim of streamlining case-handling. There is even a ‘mobile court’ option on WeChat, which allows users to complete case filings, hearings and evidence exchange – there is more information on China’s new digitised legal system in this Youtube video.

Estonia, which is branding itself as e-Estonia, wants to streamline its government and make it as lean as possible by embracing technology and AI. The Estonian Ministry of Justice asked a team of researches to design a “robot judge” that could handle small claims, in the hope that it can clear a backlog of cases. The fear surrounding this move to a technology-led justice system and government, is how vulnerable is it to security hacks and leaks? For example, in 2017, experts revealed a key flaw and vulnerability in their ID card security. You can read more about this security issue over on the Financial Times website.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes