Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people in the 10% feel otherwise. One of the classic moments in the history of common law was the emergence of Equity. It arose because the strict, predictable rules of Common Law as it then existed were leading to what were clearly unjust outcomes. Sometimes no specific rule can capture the correct action. You need room for judgement. It bugs the everliving daylights out of me that so much of law is undecidable…
And the people in the 90% that don't want to pay lawyers 500$ an hour? That's what I mean, as far as I can see I don't follow as to why that does not necessarily dwarf the concerns of the remaining 10%, and also it's not even a granted that this would actually happen. The emergence of equity in common law is one thing, but common law is administered by humans, a system written in code to which anyone was free to cont…
I do think some tools and practices can be adapted. I think, for example, that expert systems -- whether classical or hybrid a la Watson -- could make a big dent in that $500 figure. That is definitely pursuable.
But humans inject errors, it's what they do best. And outside of a properly formal system (and per Godel, these aren't perfectly usable anyway) the best way to identify errors is ... with another human.
You might say that judges have been performing software inspections for much longer than we have.
Don't get me wrong, law is as slow as frozen honey. But the problem domain is heinously complex and I expect that any software system would reflect that complexity. Given our profession's iffy track record on creating items of massive size and complexity, I lack your transformative enthusiasm.
I am what you might call a cautiously optimistic conservative. Or a pessimistic radical. Not sure. One blogger I host talks about "radical centrism".