Will AI help legal practices?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hottest trend at the moment, everyone is talking about how it may change our lives and even take our jobs. Potentially every industry will be affected by AI in the (near) future, but this doesn’t mean it will be a negative effect.

I have a background in Law so naturally I’m interested to see how AI might change the legal profession for the better.

As AI continues to develop and learn it can be used to cut time in proof-reading and research. A study in America found that it took legal professionals on average one hour to proof a document for mistakes, but it only took the AI a matter of minutes. It was able to find and fix any errors much quicker than any human can.

This same AI can also be used to search data to find patterns and anything relevant to specific cases, again by using a computer software like AI legal practises can save time (and potentially money). AI could also have the potential to learn legal jargon meaning it can read contracts and pick out important statements, and any that are missing.

Artificial Intelligence helps to minimise mistakes and human errors made in documents, just like how it can proof-read and find patterns as the AI continues to learn less mistakes will be made, and errors that can sometimes be missed by the human eye are less likely to happen.

Essentially Artificial Intelligence can be used to help law firms ultimately save a lot of time and money.

So what does this mean for the future of the legal industry?

The general consensus is that AI can and eventually will replace some of the lower level tasks that are normally given to the junior lawyers or even new lawyers, however most feel it wouldn’t be able to replace an experienced lawyer who has learnt to embrace new tech and instead make AI a valuable tool at his/her disposal.

If AI does replace the role of a graduate/low level lawyer then what affect will that have on the legal industry as a whole? If no law firms are hiring graduates, then less people will choose to study law at University and could eventually cause a huge skill gap in the market in the future.

There are many other ways AI can be used in the workplace and it will certainly leave a mark on most industries. I’m excited to see how far this can go and how the industry adapts to bridge a possible skills gap for people entering the industry.

Do you think AI can be used to improve law? Which industries do you think AI will have the biggest impact on? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

KDR Recruitment is the home of the best Information Management and Data Analytics jobs. For more AI news and view check out the KDR blog or follow KDR on LinkedIn.