AI for Lawyers

Artificial intelligence is widely thought to be something related to robots which are set to replace humans in the future. However, they are already part of a lawyer’s day to day life. Artificial Intelligence or more commonly known as “AI” are tools which help us deal with today's times. They are the digital assistant ‘Siris’ or ‘Bixby’ in your smart phones and also produce the ‘recommendations’ in your Amazon shopping and entertainment accounts.

Artificial intelligence is defined as “the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings”. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalise, or learn from past experience. i

In their report of session 2017-19, the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence stated that AI is a tool which is already deeply embedded in our lives. The prejudices of the past must not be unwittingly built into automated systems, and such systems must be carefully designed from the beginning. Access to large quantities of data is one of the factors fueling the current AI boom. We have heard considerable evidence that the ways in which data is gathered and accessed must change, so that innovative companies and academia, have fair and reasonable access to data, while citizens and consumers can protect their privacy and personal agency. ii

In the past, legal practice has been largely shielded by the incursion of automation and artificial intelligence even though the ways legal professionals process and disseminate data has evolved with advent of new technologies, the fundamentals remain the same. The practice of law is not immune from new technological advances and the impact of data driven analysis. It is being assaulted by the onslaught of sector specific AI applications with increased processing power and more effective algorithms. AI also known as augmented intelligence or cognitive computing is capable of being used to perform day to day functions more cheaply, faster and effectively.

AI is now being used in the following ways by legal professionals:

Practice Management and Billing: Legal Practice management software is a form of AI which helps lawyers to automatically compute their billable hours. These programmes record time on each matter and automatically produce invoices at the end of the set time period.

Prediction Technology: Possibly the most advanced of the currently used AI which uses software to search documents, decide on their relevancy and rank them. A basic training is provided as the criteria is entered and the algorithm works its way through. AI then generates results that predict the outcome of litigation as they are mainly used in pre-litigation planning. The AI driven software analyses previous cases, judgements and similar. It analyses data relating to costs awarded, settled cases, appeals outcomes and judgements.

Contract Review: AI analyses legal contracts such as leases and other commercial documents provided to it and checks them against legislation. Not unexpectedly, this process is more accurate and faster than human lawyers. There are hybrids in AI contract review which fall into two main product varieties the first of which is Volume Contract Review. Here the objective is the analysis of a large number of legal documents to highlight specific legal issues and located anomalies which may require further legal attention.

Contract Assistance is mainly useful for non- lawyers who need to understand a long technical document e.g. a 50 page procurement contract. It also signals the likely addition of clauses to meet standard internal rules/practice.

Legal Data research: The popular online databases like Practical Law and Lexis Nexis regularly improve their offering to support lawyers find the relevant information on cases, documents and different aspects of law. Other software helps lawyers form a strategy based upon previous outcomes in similar cases.

Chatbot Lawyers: Services such as Rocket Lawyer apply elements of document assembly to help individuals and businesses form their own legal documents, without having to instruct a lawyer. Chatbot-style tools can also provide access to basic legal assistance, such as DoNotPay, which helps people appeal parking fines.

Voice recognition: Digital dictation has improved dramatically and a host of virtual assistants such as Siri and Cortana can now carry out various functions, such as booking appointments and searching through documents, through voice alone. iii

ISSUES WITH AI

Lawyers and researchers who adopt AI should be aware of potential issues when automating - here are some of the issues.

Issues with Impartiality: AI systems are basically a set of algorithms which may bring in the biases and different assumptions of the engineers employed in creating them so it is not surprising that not all AI systems produce the same results. Even law-makers are starting to acknowledge the implications of AI biases. For instance, the 2016 EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) recognises the effects of algorithmic decision-making on the “fundamental rights and freedom of natural persons” and to address the issue of potential AI abuses. Recital 71 of the Regulation even speaks of the implementation of “technical and organizational measures” that “prevent, inter alia, discriminatory effects on natural persons on the basis of racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, religion or beliefs, trade union membership, genetic or health status or sexual orientation, or that result in measures having such an effect”.

EU Data Protection Regulation seems to prohibit processing data on the basis of membership to special categories so companies operating in the EU will have to utilise algorithms that do not take into account characteristics such as gender, race or religion. iv

Predictions gone wrong: AI systems risk arriving at a conclusion based on incorrect inferences. Predictive systems may be flawed due to incorrect assumptions where for example the system may correlate something risky when it may be related to Art or any personal interest of the subject. There are issues where the users overestimate the predictive capacity of the AI and this leads to error. Unpredictability: Artificial Intelligence systems may be unpredictable due to an external input or because of the internal structure. AI is now capable of self-teaching complex tasks which earlier were seen as impossible which include deceptive capabilities of humans. So, when systems capable of selflearning are exposed to external inputs the results can be unpredictable and even whimsical.

CONCLUSION

Lawyers are keen to update with new technological developments so they save time on routine processes and improve accuracy by limiting human error. However, accountability issues also need to be considered and discussed with the AI providers and sufficient protective measures put in place. The duty falls on the system developers to ensure that the AI decision making functions align to human values and that AI-driven systems conform to current legal and ethical standards.

Finally, before fully integrating into AI, consider the following questions:

■ What are the barriers to its use and what efficiencies, or cost benefits can be obtained through its deployment? ■ What are the ethical, legal, regulatory and compliance bases on which AI makes decisions? ■ And is the decision making consistent, fair and transparent for those who are impacted by such decisions? ■ How can bias in decision making be minimised? ■ How will liability be allocated and what are the types of loss that might be suffered when AI causes damage by operating outside its parameters? ■ Can liability for loss or damage caused by AI be insured against? ■ What role will AI have on the impact of your firm’s intellectual property (IP) strategy? And who will be liable if AI infringes a third party’s IP?

Anandakrishnan S. Nair

Honorary Treasurer Middlesex Law Society

i https://www.britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence ii AI in the UK: ready, willing and able https://publications. parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/100.pdf iii https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/stories/six-ways-the-legalsector-is-using-ai/ iv https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-informationmanagement/article/whats-inside-the-black-box-ai-challengesfor-lawyers-and-researchers/8A547878999427F7222C3CEFC3C E5E01/core-reader#en38