March of the Robots
Artificial intelligence will play an increasing role in the provision of legal services as time goes by.
However, the brave new world promised to us is not yet fully here.
The wit and wisdom of human lawyers may be required for some time to come.
These are not the droids you're looking for!
Business owners: AI is not the solution to your legal work.
Do you know what is?
An AI-savvy lawyer.
There's a lot of hype around AI, and rightly so. AI can and should help in-house teams a lot… but this is only possible if it's set up right.
Just buying an AI system without the expertise to use it is a waste of money. It ends up being a sad, lonely AI with no friends at all!
If you want to do things properly, you’ll need:
- an AI policy,;
- an AI contract review playbook;
- and training for legal staff on using the system.
It needs to fit in with the rest of the business.
Then it will have a sense of belonging, and won't be lonely anymore!
So yes, you could just buy an off-the-shelf solution and pray.
But should you?
Absolutely not.
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
AI can do useful things. It can be good for identifying issues, and it can be good for research. You still have to double-check, redact and amend absolutely everything.
And what AI really doesn’t have is judgement.
It doesn’t know when to push, when to pause, or how to weigh what’s really important in a negotiation. It cannot take 3 kinds of contract and accurately create the hybrid the client is after.
It can’t sense when something is off, or when a smile means “no.”
Apparently, you can automate certain things – boring, tedious work that doesn’t require reason or a human touch.
But in law, that accounts for a very small percentage of things.
The rest is people. It’s relationships. It’s knowing when to pick up the phone instead of sending the email, and when to let silence do the talking.
That’s about judgement.
And that’s human territory.
You have 20 seconds to comply!
I tried out an AI contract review tool recently.
It asked whose side I was on.
(A million dollar question!).
I told it, but on this occasion, it got confused and misjudged the side clauses favoured.
Clauses that were good for my client, it thought were bad – and vice versa. Not across the board but with a substantial number of errors.
AI is a tool, like Microsoft Word.
Powerful, but less reliable (although don't get me started on MS Word formatting glitches, argh!).
Make good use of AI tools but make sure you stay in control.
They can help as check-and tidy-up tools (rather than as efficiency tools) when it comes to drafting.
That's a definite value add for the client, though.