Currently, artificial intelligence is in the process of transforming workplaces across America. For factories and other forms of repetitive work, the decision to replace human labor with machines and artificial intelligence seems inevitable. However, as AI continues to advance, the topic has shifted to career paths once thought to be untouchable. For example, the role of an attorney involves intense debate and much human interaction. More mundane tasks such as research and organization can be assigned to a computer, but the field of law will always require a human touch. Or will it?
On the most basic scale, there are dozens of mundane actions that AI can automate for lawyers. Artificial intelligence can handle and streamline tasks such as contract review, basic research, and the organization of evidence. For the foreseeable future, there is simply no way around these unavoidable labors in the role of a lawyer. With the addition of artificial intelligence however, countless hours could be saved, and numerous small mistakes could be caught. According to Harvard Law School’s David Wilkins in Harvard Law Today, “the industry is moving from non-specialized AI to AI trained on legal materials, designed to tackle specific, complex legal problems.” With such innovative progress, the possibility for reliable AI use in the field of law will only grow.
The key benefit for lawyers of using AI is that it can be a massive time saver. Lawyers spend hours poring over research, building cases, and collecting information to use in court. Not only that, a significant chunk of this work occurs outside of their billed hours. Through the utilization of AI tools, even clients would benefit, as saved time could be utilized to better serve their needs.
On that note, artificial intelligence has also remained a free service to date. The utilization of this free product would heavily cut down on litigation costs for a client. Jonathan Ciottone described to The National Law Review how AI creates, “quicker turnaround times and lower legal fees, resulting in overall economic savings.” That being said, a tool as powerful as AI can not be without downsides.
Experience has shown that AI demonstrates bias and discrimination. As Chiragg Bains writes for Brookings, “Sometimes, this is a result of training on unrepresentative data. In other cases, an algorithm will find and replicate hidden patterns of human discrimination it finds in the training data.” AI makes decisions and creates responses from large pools of public data it has collected. Given this technique, it is hard to remove unintentional bias from artificial intelligence if asking it to make decisions or evaluate the outcome of a case. `
These pools of data also create major privacy concerns, which are often the most prevalent issues in the minds of firms and clients alike. Privacy is of utmost importance to law firms that handle some of their clients’ most sensitive information. If public artificial intelligence services are used, that same sensitive data could be entered into the larger pool and available to a significant number of people.
In conclusion, there are several distinct advantages and disadvantages to the use of artificial intelligence in the field of law. While there are certainly automation advantages of using AI in basic tasks, it is impossible to avoid certain privacy, bias, and complexity concerns. However, things like private and closed circuit AI tools can mitigate potential privacy issues. In addition, the impact that artificial intelligence could have on the field of law in the next decade is too promising to deny. It should be implemented on a larger scale for simple legal tasks as a method to save time as well as money. As long as transparency with the client and proper protocol is maintained, the pros of artificial intelligence far outweigh the cons.
