Will artificial intelligence replace lawyers?
The term artificial intelligence or AI was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference. It is the ability of the machine to understand and apply ‘intelligence’ on its own. In the last few years AI has expanded to various sectors including healthcare and finance.
Many believe that advancement in artificial intelligence could lead to increased unemployment. That belief is not entirely wrong. Consultancy company Accenture managed to automate 17,000 jobs without a single redundancy. PwC claims that the number now stands at 25,000 automated jobs and it is expected that 40% of jobs will be gone by 2030 in the United States of America and a further 30% of jobs will be automated in the United Kingdom.
However, when one digs deeper they realize that the ability for robots or AI to take the jobs of humans varies from industry to industry.
In the last few months, there has been a lot of focus worldwide around the impact of Artificial intelligence on the legal sector. Many are wondering whether artificial intelligence would replace lawyers.
The legal sector has seen the introduction of many new solutions where technology has improved the efficiency of lawyers such as contract analysis software, AI-based legal research software, and many more. However, none of these tools aim to take a lawyer’s job. For instance where previously a lawyer would be putting in keywords and spending hours in getting legal research done, now with an AI-based legal research software they can get research done swiftly and quickly.
The legal profession is highly driven by analysis and a degree of emotional quotient which cannot be automated. Artificially intelligent tools can reach a level where they can drastically reduce a lawyer’s time and effort but the ability to strategize and consult is still very much beyond the reach of any software.
At the same time, we do see a degree of automation in certain fields of law. One of the most evident examples of this is the Do Not Pay chatbot. This automates the task of fighting parking fines by overturning thousands of parking tickets without even going to a lawyer. It has helped people in saving more than $9.3 million.
The legal industry is still developing in India and there would be various new and interesting developments in near future. However, what we would see is that these developments would not entirely replace lawyer’s job where analysis and strategization is required but actually make them more efficient while automating various clerical tasks.
Authored by Anshul Gupta, Co-Founder MikeLegal
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