Lawyers: Working Smart Just Got Easier (Oh No!)

Legislation places of work have lately been “blessed” with a deluge of latest instruments that make working sensible radically simpler. How can that not be excellent news?

Feeding the Canine

A few years in the past, I heard that the regulation workplace of the long run would encompass a lawyer, a pc and a canine.

The pc is there to greet purchasers, interview them, do authorized analysis and evaluation, put together paperwork, negotiate with counterparties, and argue earlier than decision-makers.

The canine is there to maintain the lawyer away from the pc.

And the lawyer is there to feed the canine.

(The final two kinda cancel out one another. However who doesn’t like canines?)

Working Good

You’ve heard the slogan “work smarter, not more durable.” Appears sensible.

The fundamental thought is to make use of instruments and strategies that allow you to accomplish desired outcomes with optimum effectiveness whereas avoiding pointless put on and tear on people. Decrease wasted effort.

Some have written books about this, together with me. Mine, titled The Lawyer’s Information to Working Smarter With Data Instruments, focuses on how authorized professionals can leverage information instruments like synthetic intelligence to work smarter.

Along with the expertise, my e book covers the attitudinal and methodological features.

An Instance

I as soon as helped a big New York regulation agency automate a part of its municipal finance observe. The pre-existing course of was one thing like this: Shoppers would name or fax in a time period sheet with the specified parameters for a financing, e.g., to construct a brand new fireplace station or highschool. The connection associate would make clear the plan, recall current related transactions, and assign an affiliate to draft the wanted documentation. The affiliate would dig out the related earlier paperwork, mark it up with modifications for the present shopper, and go it to “phrase processing.” (This was some time in the past!)

After a few iterations of corrections and additions, the work product would make its manner up the chain, and the paperwork would finally be executed and filed. A day or two of elapsed time would go, and eight or so hours of time could be billed.

Utilizing mainstream doc automation software program, I produced a little bit system that compressed this course of into about half an hour. Reply a number of questions and immediately generate all of the wanted agreements, certifications, and so forth. Not solely was it straightforward and quick, but it surely prevented the unintentional remnants of prior transactional particulars somebody forgot to ‘substitute’ within the executed examples I noticed.

Good. Much less onerous.

New Mates

Legislation places of work have lately been “blessed” with a deluge of latest instruments that make working sensible radically simpler. Our machines have all types of latest cognitive expertise (the blue ones under.)

How can this not be excellent news?

Let’s take into account the downsides of all of those new instruments. Listed below are 10.

Oh No! The Draw back

The rewrites! For those who occur to have up to date a e book about superior authorized expertise earlier than the top of 2022, with none point out of generative AI, you’re gonna must do yet one more version. (This one is private.)

Velocity is just not your good friend should you invoice by the hour. And in case your billings are decimated, how will you fiscal new bills for subscriptions, coaching and assist?

You’ll probably must engineer new billing and compensation techniques. Is it time to let go of time? (There goes the pyramid!)

If we delegate all of the grunt work to machines how will we practice associates?

Simpler is just not essentially higher. (Mechanical misinformation and confabulation current high quality pitfalls.)

Your opponents also can work sensible, so any strategic benefit of your doing so could also be short-lived. (Get able to Dance with Cognitive Exoskeletons.)

We’re all inclined to innovation fatigue. Solely a lot instrument churn will be sustained.

If we give machines all the straightforward work, which means extra onerous work for us people. We’ll must study new expertise. There shall be new “individuals” to oversee.

We’ll face a deluge of machine-generated content material. Greater than machine summarization could possibly counteract.

The flood of choices for instruments and strategies can pose extreme selection overload. And every part is altering quickly. (I replicate on this in Cacaphonautics: Navigating the Noise.)

One reply to this final draw back is to enlist instruments about instruments.

(For an early have a look at this theme see Data Instruments for Authorized Data Software Makers. 10 Synthetic Intelligence and Legislation 295-302 (2003). With John Hokannen.)

Buckle Up! And Down

We’re usually informed to “Buckle up — it’s going to be a wild experience!”

In fact, we additionally must buckle down and sort out the onerous work in entrance of us.

The most recent AI developments have profound implications for a way regulation is completed, how professionals are educated, and the way purchasers are billed. Such points have been simmering for a very long time, however generative AI has introduced them to a boiling level.

Don’t let the challenges I’ve itemized freak you out. Take it straightforward. Benefit from the experience!

Now again to work.

Ed Be aware: This piece started life as a keynote on the Future Lawyer convention in Boston in Might 2024.