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Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

mashable.com

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Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#11

Post by IntronExon »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #8

This part of the article goes with my general: > So does this spell the end of humanity? Not at all. On the contrary, the use of AI can actually help lawyers expedite their work, and free them up to focus on tasks that still require a human brain. Although what that does not point out is it will still cost jobs just not "all" the jobs. It will soon take less people to do the same job and unless the demand grows or th…

The best case is that lawyers feel the pinch, because that’s maybe the only way we’re ever going to see real legislation to protect people in this area. As long as automation is seen to largely hurt people on the bottom of the totem pole, there will be hand-waving galore. The moment it starts to bite people who see themselves as indispensable and important, especially the people who are most of the lobbyists and politicians, that will end.

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#12

Post by [deleted] »

mrleiter wrote: post #9

> "I strongly believe that law students and junior lawyers need to understand these AI tools, and other technologies, that will help make them better lawyers and shape future legal practice," Buell told Mashable in an email. I am a law student and that is not what is going through my head. What I see is a tougher job market, justifiably. Understanding, and more importantly, developing legal tech will help me make to…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#13

Post by fncypants »

onion2k wrote: post #5
tzfld wrote: post #2

So, is that mean lawyers can be replaced by robots in the future?

Some of them, yes. If your job is taking data and transforming it in to different data, or taking data and interpreting it to produce new data, then a computer is going to be better at it than you very soon. If the developers of that software can persuade your boss (and any relevant government authorities) that this is the case then you'll need a new job soon. This is true in all professional services. If your job in…

Very true.

There is a fundamental role that lawyers play that is an intangible: to pursue justice for the client.

Much of why law is expensive and has been slow to automate is because of intentional and unintentional barriers.

Unintentional because it has developed in evolutionary form, over hundereds of years, and during that time has imperfectly used human language as its protocol. Contracts and statutes are difficult to make perfect using the English language. Lawyers thus argue over what the parties intended and understood when they fixed their promises into words.

Intentional because of, for example regulatory capture. Law is an industry that has taken actions in the past to make itself necessary.

But even if these barriers are fixed and much of law is automated, there remains a notion of what is fair and right, or ought to be fair and right. This is a human concept.

Take for example blockchain and its contracts, which remove some of these barriers. Currency is transferred to/from one address to another because that is what the code intended, and the code is law and the transaction immutable. But what if the other side fraudulently misrepresented who they were? Do you not want a human advocate and arbitrator there to determine what is right in this situation?

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#16

Post by mywittyname »

tzfld wrote: post #2

So, is that mean lawyers can be replaced by robots in the future?

It's already happening, it's just not visible because the lawyers being replaced are the young, entry-level people that get stuck doing research early in their career.

I think many people are expecting this to democratize the legal system. My fear is that it will consolidate power into the hands of a few top firms and raise the barrier to entry dramatically.

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#17

Post by maxerickson »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #3

I have to be honest, I'm a bit suspicious considering the study was conducted by the company which developed the AI and that the academic auditors are all law professors and not AI professors.

As long as they did a reasonable job of making sure the company running the AI didn't have the questions long enough to just go cheat, I think the law professors should have much more to say about the output than an AI professor would.

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#18

Post by dragonwriter »

The AI was clearly faster, which is no surprise. But since the "correct" answers for the test were assigned by one group of humans, and the correct answers in real practice are also determined by (a different group of, compared to either those running the test or those taking the test) humans, I'm not sure that result that the AI was more correct can be in any sense meaningful.

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#19

Post by nopinsight »

mrleiter wrote: post #9

> "I strongly believe that law students and junior lawyers need to understand these AI tools, and other technologies, that will help make them better lawyers and shape future legal practice," Buell told Mashable in an email. I am a law student and that is not what is going through my head. What I see is a tougher job market, justifiably. Understanding, and more importantly, developing legal tech will help me make to…

The AI's effect is that some tasks get automated and require much less labor but in many cases a real human lawyer is still required to communicate with the client.

* Does that mean some lawyers or law firms which make good use of the technology might offer lower prices and gain market share?

* Is there latent demand that may be induced into the legal market once the costs are cheaper?

* Can lawyers retrain to specialize in other laws and thus increase supply and lower costs for less automatable areas over time?

I know little about the legal market. So I'm curious if the above analysis makes sense for it.

Re: Stanford, USC, Duke study shows AI can read contracts better than lawyers

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

IntronExon wrote: post #11
throwaway2016a wrote: post #8

This part of the article goes with my general: > So does this spell the end of humanity? Not at all. On the contrary, the use of AI can actually help lawyers expedite their work, and free them up to focus on tasks that still require a human brain. Although what that does not point out is it will still cost jobs just not "all" the jobs. It will soon take less people to do the same job and unless the demand grows or th…

The best case is that lawyers feel the pinch, because that’s maybe the only way we’re ever going to see real legislation to protect people in this area. As long as automation is seen to largely hurt people on the bottom of the totem pole, there will be hand-waving galore. The moment it starts to bite people who see themselves as indispensable and important, especially the people who are most of the lobbyists and poli…

> The best case is that lawyers feel the pinch, because that’s maybe the only way we’re ever going to see real legislation to protect people in this area.

Probably not; while lots of legislators (and lobbyists) were trained as lawyers, protecting the jobs of people who actually practice law isn't really something that shows any evidence of being a priority in that class; in fact, a large majority of them spend much of their time railing against practicing lawyers as a class.

Unless the political and electoral calculus forces them to adopt protections (to which the threat to practicing lawyers is pretty much irrelevant), don't expect any action.

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