TECHNOLOGY
The Future Is Now
How artificial intelligence is affecting your practice and how to leverage it.
By Ronald l. Chichester and Mark I. Unger
Artificial intelligence is the capacity of a machine to perform
operations that are analogous to learning and decision-making by humans.
The field was first conceived by the Greeks in antiquity, but until the
20th century, it was only the stuff of philosophers and science fiction
writers. The advent of digital computers in the 1970s, however, enabled
the first marketable expert systems a decade later. Since then, AI has
expanded into many facets of our lives. In fact, if you think about it
in terms of adhering to Moore’s law, the capability of AI is doubling
every 18 months—and its impact is becoming pervasive. Indeed, some
professions, such as car and truck driving, are being taken over by
AI.
Where are some current examples of AI?
The concept of machine learning is exhibited in something as basic as
autocomplete (when your word processor figures out from your past
examples what you want to type) to snippets (where you tell it ahead of
time what you most likely will want to type). For example, if you want
to massively increase your billing efficiency, you would create snippets
and then use these in billing entry, such that “TC” would automatically
expand to “Telephone Conference.” But you’re not limited to small
phrases. You could create a new profile for a client in your cloud
practice management system and send invitations using “TOS” and it would
automatically expand to the “Terms of Service” for use of the
confidential site, security responsibilities of the client, etc. In an
age of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act,
personally identifiable information, protected health information,
sensitive information, and Texas House Bill 300, automation can be a
significant protection for attorneys.
Why should lawyers be concerned about AI?
Not everyone knows how to determine whether a particular statute
pertains to a given situation. Law school provided us with mental skills
that we use in our everyday practices—ways of thinking that are not
common outside of our profession. Since that knowledge can be used for
good and ill, legal professionals are licensed by the state. A law
license provides us with the opportunity to practice legally in the
state and extract money from our clients. If those mental skills can be
mimicked, our ability to get paid will be diminished.
The automation of the legal profession is already underway. Indeed,
most document review is performed by software. Websites with
fill-in-the-blank forms can generate documents that previously were
generated by lawyers just a few decades ago. As Kurt Vonnegut once
quipped: If you compete with a slave, you are a slave. The
downward pressure on fees that we’re all feeling is, in part, a
reflection of the impact of AI.
The high fees that attorneys command make our profession a ripe target
for automation, which is inevitable as seen by its institutionalization
in the larger economy. Currently, the low hanging fruit in the
crosshairs of AI are those areas of law that are more rules-based, such
as bankruptcy, e-discovery, and legal research. Eventually, all but the
most obscure areas of law are likely to be automated.
What can you do to use AI to streamline your practice?
Theodore Roszak once said that computers are only good at two things:
performing repetitive tasks and storing and retrieving large amounts of
information. The goal here is to use computers for what they are best
at—repetition and handling large amounts of data. Look for parts of your
practice that can be performed by software, and automate them.
This can give you time to go after more clients or be with your family.
Automation can enable you to offer alternative billing structures that
can make you central to your client’s business model.
You don’t have to do this yourself. AI-based services are already on
the market. Examples include Zapier (protocols that allow one software
program to communicate with another); SmartForms, which enables
sophisticated document assembly; Premonition, which makes predictions
based on the judge involved; Brainspace, which employs machine learning
techniques to accelerate e-discovery; and ROSS Intelligence, powered by
IBM’s Watson, which is already supplanting young (human) associates in
several practice areas.
Change is hard. In this case, however, change is preferable to the
alternative. TBJ
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RONALD L. CHICHESTER is a lawyer, patent attorney, expert witness, technology consultant, certified computer forensic examiner, certified information systems auditor, and software programmer who develops and uses artificial intelligence in his law practice. For articles, go to texascomputerlaw.com. |
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MARK I. UNGER is a family lawyer, mediator, and legal technology consultant working with firms to create efficiencies in their workflows, with an emphasis on cloud-based practice management systems. For a short video on AI and law, go to bit.ly/igniteungerai, and for more information about Unger, go to unger-law.com. |
