Lawyers and technology: Frenemies

Everyone is talking about how AI is set to revolutionize the legal industry. Look at what Law Geex managed to achieve with its AI review of 5 NDAs. A lawyer, on an average took about 90 mins and Lawgeex’s AI needed only 26 seconds! Though I am sure this was done in a very controlled environment this is highly significant and indicative of what is to come. Even if it still remains far away from the“ human intelligence” we seek, the rise of the robo-lawyer appears imminent. But we need to ask ourselves, how many lawyers really take to simple technology leave alone complex AI levels? In India, even in Bengaluru (the software hub), you yet find lawyers dictating contract drafts to their stenographers. While there is a lot of interest in AI amongst the corporate legal departments, the percentage doing something about it is probably in the single digit.

For the millennial Indian lawyers, technology seems to have got restricted to legal research and job hunts. In India legal technology is not even taught as a dedicated subject in law schools.

Read more at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/need-hour-technology-training-law-schools-vijayta-sharma/

If the legal industry has to change, then it has to start with education. It is time to step up and push our knowledge boundaries to learn what technology can do. It can give lawyers the requisite efficiency gains and the value-adds to the clients plus not to forget the work-life balance which so eludes most of us. Lawyers need to stop seeing technology as the enemy and move in the direction to make it a friend.