Whether you noticed it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is influencing our daily life more and more. It is already implemented in your Netflix viewing preferences, your mortgage suitability or in the screening process of you as a potential employee (Markou, 2017). As artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, most sectors are embracing it, so is the legal sector.
Legal services are from a historic point of view, a traditional sector which is very labour-intensive. Especially court trails demand a lot of man-hours. Dutch internet giants like Bol.com and Markplaats already found a solution for this, they implemented ‘e-Courts’, meaning that disputes between two parties are taken care of automatically without any human interference (Van Harskamp, 2017).
The industry for ‘legal tech’ has grown significant the last couple of years. Since 2010 The Netherlands has welcomed almost 90 new companies that totally focus on legal tech. The big law firms also embraced it. The only struggle for now: relevant data. The data is there, but not accessible for everyone. The companies who own the data, keep it for themselves. A general database, with all relevant data in it, could solve this problem. To achieve this, companies need to realise that sharing their data is in the first place beneficial for themselves.
Not only in The Netherlands legal tech is trending, in the United States and the United Kingdom the same thing is happening. In the US they developed a tool named ‘Ross’, which helps lawyers predict the best possible verdict. The University College London has a similar tool, which helps to predict the results of real life cases (Johnston, 2016).
Although these current developments might only look beneficial, this is not the case for everyone. A lot of small legal firms are worried that they will bear the brunt. They don’t have the resources to compete against the big firms, which easily can make large investments. Besides that, the small legal firms also fear start-ups which are fully tech focused and therefore can compete on price. (Betlem & Broekhuizen, 2017)
Technological advancements seem inevitable in the old-fashioned sector of legal services. Legal tech is something that is trendier than ever and the first real life adaptions are getting visible. These advancements however also bring potential downsides along the ride. No doubt that technology will take over the sector, the only question is when and at what price. The robot judge is just around the corner, however human interference should never be underestimated.
References
Betlem, R. & Broekhuizen K. (2017) Tech bedreigt kleine advocatenkantoren, Financieel Dagblad, https://www.fd.nl/morgen/1219629/tech-bedreigt-kleine-advocatenkantoren , 8th of October 2017.
Johnston, C. (2016) Artificial intelligence ‘judge’ developed by UCL computer scientists, The Guardian, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/ai-judge-robot-european-court-of-human-rights-law-verdicts-artificial-intelligence-a7377351.html , 7th of October 2017.
Markou, C. (2017) Are We Ready for Robot Judges?, Discover, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/05/16/are-we-ready-for-robot-judges/#.WdjSCWhL9PY, 7th of October 2017.
Van Harskamp, G. (2017) ‘Robotrechter komt eraan’, De Telegraaf, https://www.telegraaf.nl/financieel/366728/robotrechter-komt-eraan, 7th of October 2017.
Hi Jasper, thanks for writing this interesting blog. Artificial intelligence (AI) is indeed getting more and more involved in our lives. Integrating AI in to the legal system is in my opinion positive development because it helps judges make decision faster on previous data collected. In addition, it could help firms predict the outcome of winning an case in court. Therefore, saving a lot of money. An other thing I am curious about is the way they will collect the data of legal cases. Because as you are well aware, the U.S. legal system uses common law and the majority of the rest of the world uses civil law. I wonder what your thoughts are about this?
Kind regards,
Rutger
Hi Rutger,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, I agree with you that the potential of AI is enormous. Unfortunately, this also will impact the business opportunities of smaller firms (like I already mentioned in my article). Besides that, it is a challenge trying to adapt AI into two different legal systems. However like you already mentioned, AI mainly will help to predict the outcome. Therefore, it can be valuable for both legal systems, since it gives a better understanding of the case. That in these different systems, the processes and decision making differ, doesn’t really matter. In the beginning AI will mainly be used to gather additional information and provide extra advice in order to come to a verdict.
Best regards,
Jasper