"Legal jobs in the age of artificial intelligence: moving from today's limited universe of data toward the great beyond"
by Segal, Philip (2018)
Abstract
When telephones were new, many respectable lawyers would not have one on their desks. Senior partners greeted word processors and computers the same way in the 1970s. Those efficiencies were unstoppable, and in their presence more law jobs were produced than ever before. What we call artificial intelligence is no different. Messengers and typists lost their jobs when legal and non-legal firms adopted word processing, computers, email, voicemail, and other new technology. They were replaced with more people who could add more value. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will do the same thing: out will go the lawyers who do repetitive, uncreative work. Lawyers who survive will need particular skills to manage the machines that will make law more productive and therefore more affordable. The productivity will make room for lawyers in brand new fields-some foreseeable and some not.
Key Passage
What lawyers may think of as AI are new programs that promise to slash the number of billable hours their firms can work, such as the kind of program at work at JP Morgan, which the bank claims has saved 360,000 hours of work by lawyers and loan officers who now let computers interpret (to an extent) commercial loan agreements." That sounds like a lot of jobs and it is, but consider: for a 40-hour per week employee with three weeks' vacation, this many hours eliminated comes to 183 person years of work. In a company the size ofJP Morgan, that is less than one tenth of one percent of the number of employees (p.215)
Keywords
Artificial Intelligence, Law, Lawyers, Machine Learning, TechnologyThemes
AI and LawLinks to Reference
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