Artificial Intelligence And The Legal Profession

For the past two years, leading law firms have launched new research and development departments, aimed at developing their legal technology and investing in new opportunities to improve their commercial litigation systems and procedures. Through data analytics and machine learning, and using systems such as the iManage system, firms hope that future costs, length and results of litigation cases will be able to be predicted more accurately.

Law firms have also announced partnerships with academic institutions such as the London School of Economics and University of Liverpool to manage litigation risk and develop models to predict case outcomes. These announcements follow on from the rise in law firms adopting machine learning and AI (artificial intelligence) to improve client services and case management.

The use of blockchain has also risen with large law firms adopting it for various purposes. With the engagement in smart contracts and how blockchain could reduce the steps needed to executing contracts and the use of IBM hyperledger software being built to reduce insurance fraud, the issue of regulation and data protection also arises particularly with the EU s General Data Protection Regulation coming into effect later this year.

The AI revolution taking place within the legal industry looks set to continue particularly with the increase in commercial litigation. AI and legal technology will enable firms to process documentation and contracts such as being able to identify relevant words and names within millions of pages of documents in a much shorter amount of time than it would take doing manually. This would therefore increase productivity and client satisfaction. AI can be used to scan and interpret documents and contracts and essentially allows decisions to be made instead of through humans themselves.

With firms new partnerships and expanding research and development departments, these will also act as a consultancy to clients who are involved in litigation relating to technological disputes and high value complex claims. By better managing litigation risk, firms will be able to better advice clients and make decisions based on decision science and actuarial expertise.