Smart Software and Lawyers: Just Keep the Billing Up
June 3, 2022
In a webinar for the Innovation in Law Studies Alliance, a pair of academics at the intersection of law and technology shared their thoughts on the role of expert systems in the legal sector. Ivar Timmer is a professor of Legal Management & Technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam and Tomer Libal is a professor of Computer Science at the American University of Paris. Legal Insider summarizes their discussion in, “Guest Post: Expert Systems Are Here, Let’s Welcome them to the Legal World.” The article specifies the difference between expert systems, a type of AI that has been around since the 1960s, and machine learning: The former is based on the knowledge and experience of experts while the latter is based on data. Writers María Jesús González-Espejo and Ebru Metin then explain why expert systems would be good for the legal field:
“Because most legal professionals have more work than they can afford, they lack time. Much of this work is routine, with little added value. Another reason that makes them interesting is the phenomenon of hyper-regulation. It is impossible to assimilate so many rules. Neither the citizen nor the professional is capable of keeping up to date, understanding and applying a legal system that has become an unreachable jungle. Expert systems can do it, if we teach them to understand the rules, they can guide us, teach us to apply them and even make the most lawful decisions and they will do all this, in an explainable way, because we will have been the ones who told them how to do it. In addition, expert systems can help us improve the quality of standards by requiring representation according to computer-executable logic, which helps clarify and simplify natural language, as well as identify and remove unwanted ambiguities and inaccuracies. Another reason is that our sector is essentially based on legal knowledge which is in the head by a few people. Knowledge of the regulations, of the jurisprudence, of the opinion of the public administrations and of the doctrine.”
Other advantages include information consistency and immediate response times. Also, with expert systems, legal professionals can modeled legal knowledge without having to rely on computer scientists. The article does not mention a key point we observed—expert systems are cheaper than human lawyers while providing new opportunities for billing, too. The write-up goes on to examine which areas of the law might benefit most from expert systems and makes some predictions for the future, so curious readers can navigate there for those details.
Cynthia Murrell, June 3, 2022
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