The Australian Broadcasting Corp reports….
Concerns are being raised about the effect of digital disruption on the legal profession and its practitioners, graduates and the general public.
A director of the Law Council of Australia said artificial intelligence and the internet are causing a seismic shift in the way law is practised.
And like many other industries, the disruptions it faces can be likened to an uberisation — or tele-networking — of the profession.
Bill Potts, also deputy president of the Queensland Law Society, said big international firms considering whether to litigate, or how to litigate a case, were turning to a research tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
The system, known as Ross, analyses previous similar cases and predicts the likely outcome of potential litigation with a high degree of accuracy.
The company’s website describes their product as “an advanced legal research tool that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to make the research process more efficient”.
Fewer graduates practising
Media player: “Space” to play, “M” to mute, “left” and “right” to seek.
Traditionally, the mundane research work of going through documents and finding patterns and principles for use in legal cases has been performed by law graduates.
Mr Potts said the proportion of graduates practising law had fallen from about 50 per cent to 20 per cent as firms embraced computerisation and pruned staff numbers.
He said medium to large firms were employing fewer people as they turned to technology like blockchain — a continuously growing list of digital records in packages linked and secured using cryptography.
“Graduates traditionally have worked in firms where they were tasked with trawling through thousands of documents, looking for patterns or precedents,” Mr Potts said.
“But blockchain can do that job in a matter of seconds and with a high degree of accuracy.”
Read the full report at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-28/law-council-of-australia-raises-concerns-about-uberisation/10306298
