A very interesting application of the development of AI and machine learning can be found within the legal sector. Traditionally, the legal sector is quite old-fashioned and not adapting to new technologies. Furthermore, the legal sector is heavily dependent on large documents of jurisdiction, old cases and law books. Some examples of what AI and machine learning can do for the legal sector are:
• Review documents and research: A company called ROSS Intelligence is working on systems to process natural language to review large documents and match them to similar cases. This can help to reduce the load of human hours quite dramatically.
• Perform due diligence: When taking new corporate decisions, a lot due diligence has to be performed; confirming facts and figures to thoroughly evaluate decisions.
• Contract review: Companies such as LawGeex and Kira Systems are developing software which can rapidly review contracts, identify potential risks and highlight these risks.
• Automated divorces: The costs of using divorce lawyers are very high. Wevorce is able to do automated, online divorces for much less of the price traditional lawyers cost.
Source: (Marr, 2018)
In my opinion, these technologies are very interesting to be adopted within courts or lawyer’s offices. These technologies, of course, do require significant investments to adopt. Unfortunately, sufficient funds are something the public law sector is missing. Dutch judges and public prosecutors even raised alarm with regards to the inability to innovate within the legal sector (NOS, 2018). There is a massive shortage of millions of funds, and these lawyers and prosecutors are even asking for money (NOS, 2018).
So even though there seems to be a lot of potential for AI and machine learning within the legal sector. For now, it only seems like law firms, who might be able to invest into new technologies. This could create strong disadvantage to the public sector, and therefore I can see why judges and public prosecutors raised alarm.
References:
Marr, B. (2018). How AI And Machine Learning Are Transforming Law Firms And The Legal Sector Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/23/how-ai-and-machine-learning-are-transforming-law-firms-and-the-legal-sector/
NOS (2018). Unieke waarschuwing rechters en OM: ‘Rechtspraak wordt uitgehold’. Retrieved from: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2250340-unieke-waarschuwing-rechters-en-om-rechtspraak-wordt-uitgehold.html
