LEGAL
“Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine that is designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result would not be dependent on the machine's ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.”1
Before identifying the many ways AI might be used by legal departments, it is useful to understand how companies in general are using AI. One thing to underscore for both is the stark fact as to why AI is popular with businesses: Technology doesn’t get tired, sleep in, call in sick, or take vacations, and it doesn’t need breaks for food or when nature calls. Technology just keeps working and working and working. That is a huge benefit to any company – and their legal department.
The AI use most in-house lawyers are familiar with is for purposes of e-discovery (though I promise you I am not going to make you read another article on e-discovery). Originally, the AI use here was pretty simple – looking for keywords in megabytes of data. Doing this saved an amazing amount of time and money that would otherwise be spent paying lawyers to find documents that might be relevant. Later, AI was used to eliminate duplicate documents and connect strings of emails, again doing in minutes what would take days if done by people. And finally, AI is now capable of searching documents for context, concepts, and tone with what is known as predictive coding, going far beyond simple keyword searches. Predictive coding is even being used as a tool in internal compliance investigations – to sift through mounds of data in minutes or hours.
Using AI for e-discovery is great and its benefits in terms of time and cost savings are apparent. But is that it for in-house lawyers? The short answer is no. The longer answer is definitely no. AI has tremendous possibilities in the legal field, and we are seeing many advances on that front already. While a number of outside law firms are in the process of developing uses for AI, the biggest potential impact comes from how AI is used by in-house legal departments. This is because the incentive for in-house legal departments to find the lowest-cost way to do things is greater than the incentive for law firms to find ways to offer lower-priced services (i.e., quantity of billable hours vs. quality of a billable hour). With that in mind, here is a list of some of the things AI can do (or is coming) for in-house legal departments that will disrupt and benefit the legal market:
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1 “The Turing Test” – Wikipedia.com.
Sterling Miller spent over 20 years as in-house counsel including being general counsel for Sabre Corporation and Travelocity. He currently serves as senior counsel for Hilgers Graben PLLC focusing on litigation, data privacy, compliance, and consulting with in-house legal departments. He is CIPP/US certified in data privacy. You can follow his blog “Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel” at www.TenThings.net and follow him on Twitter @10ThingsLegal. His first book, The Evolution of Professional Football, was published in December 2015 and is available on Amazon and at www.SterlingMillerBooks.com. His second book, Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel: Practical Advice and Successful Strategies, was just published by the American Bar Association and is available here.
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