Canadian Lawyer

48 www.canadianlawyermag.com OPINION BACKPAGE Ignore AI at your peril Consumers expect immediate answers, writes Tara Vasdani, and artificial intelligence will help law firms keep up with the demand FOR CONSUMER-FACING products, skeptical buyers often want to know how to get the most bang for their buck. For law firms, if you can't predict trial outcomes and offer instantaneous legal advice on a preliminary set of facts, your skeptical buyer may now just decide to go another way. Lawyers are facing a time when, just like Amazon and Netflix, legal advice, research and client communication are expected to be immediate. Like other service providers, firms that can automate some of the most time-consuming tasks can offer their services at a lower cost, and they can afford to serve many more clients, including those without the means to comfortably hire a lawyer. Today, artificial intelligence is beginning to transform the legal profession in many ways. In most cases, it augments what human lawyers can do and frees them up to take on higher-level and higher-billing tasks, such as advising clients, negotiating deals and appearing before the courts. This new epoch of law firm innovation has caused legal ser- vices to move from experience-driven legal analysis to data-driven insights, providing better-informed guidance for clients. Firms such as Deloitte have predicted that 100,000 legal roles will be automated by 2036. They report that, by this year, law firms will be faced with a "tipping point" for a new talent strategy. So, what's the consequence? Now more than ever is the time for all law firms to commit to becoming AI ready. How? Well, here's a snapshot of some of the most avant-garde and constructive tools being used by firms today: Automated legal research: Tools such as ROSS Intelligence and Alexsei use machine learn- ing to identify relevant and up-to-date case law from across the web and scan the internet to discern lawyers' opinions on those cases. The software then generates a legal memo- randum within hours. These tools allow law- yers to determine the strength of their posi- tions almost immediately. Gone are the days of an overworked, tired and hungry articling student, who can now be given a 30+ page memorandum of law to expand on or dissect and begin drafting a preliminary factum; Document review software: Automated docu- ment review has long been employed by Big Law to deal with the high volume of docu- ments generated in the internet age. For lit- igators, document review involves machines looking for relevant documents using search parameters as set by lawyers and/or their staff, to flag certain documents as relevant versus non-relevant. Machine learning then learns what type of documents it is supposed to be looking for, and more accurately identi- fies other relevant documents; Contract review: Software such as Diligen and Kira Systems work by allowing firms to upload digital contracts to their programs and quickly identify, extract and analyze key clauses. Work that previously took 360,000 lawyer-hours can now be done in seconds, says JP Morgan, which has been employing contract review software since 2017; Predicting legal outcomes: Court analytic soft- ware such as Loom Analytics analyzes data to help make predictions about the outcomes of legal proceedings. "If we go to trial, how likely are we to win?" or "Should I settle?" Because AI can access more relevant data at faster speeds, it can be better than lawyers at predicting the outcomes of legal disputes and proceedings, thus helping clients make deci- sions about their cases at a pre-emptive rate. What AI can't do Although AI generates efficiency, competition and faster client service, it cannot yet repli- cate advocacy, negotiation or the structuring of complex deals. Tasks such as advising cli- ents, writing briefs, negotiating settlements and appearing before the courts are beyond the reach of automation, at least for a while. What it can do Any legal work that depends on collating and analyzing historical data such as past judicial decisions, including legal opinions or evalu- ating likely litigation outcomes is the absolute dominion of AI. Human lawyers are hopeless against the undefeatable processing power of a processor for sifting through voluminous data. Firms that fail to take advantage of AI-powered efficiencies lag in competing with those that do so. Thus, lawyers who understand technology and educate themselves about the latest #legaltech developments may be at the forefront and in a position to monopolize client generation and business development. *Hear more from Vasdani, who is a speaker at the upcoming LegalTech Summit on May 26. Visit canadianlawyerevents.com/legal-tech for more information. Tara Vasdani, is the principal lawyer and founder of Remote Law Canada, a law firm specializing in civil litigation, employment law and remote work. "Work that previously took 360,000 lawyer-hours can now be done in seconds. " rm

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