b'42 Local Government LawyerAI: Hope or hype?AI is predicted to bring a paradigm shift to the legal sector but what are the practical implications in the immediate future? Adam Carey looks at what legal technology canand cant doin the foreseeable future.Artificial intelligence (AI) is something weLawyers are not cut out of theseavailable in various forms, including are all very familiar with thanks to theprocesses completelythe results of AIiterations that can study hundreds of countless dystopian films on the subject butanalysis will still be sent for high-levelthousands of cases to develop a statistical in the real world are the implications quitereview by a lawyer, but the process doesanalysis of a judge, the likely success of an as serious? enable legal professionals to concentrateindividual case in relation to past precedent Current research and recenton the more complex parts of the processand even the suitability of specific lawyers developments suggest that AI can offerwhile leaving much of the grunt work toassigned to the case. Using this analysis, this much needed efficiency gains for the legalthe machine. The process of documenttechnology can also provide basic advice on profession.searching is refined through the lawyerhow to approach a situation based on how According to a recent whitepaper fromtelling the system what it is getting right andsimilar circumstances have resulted in the Legal tech start-up Fountech, the practicalwrong, enabling it to produce more accuratepast.applications of AI include streamliningresults as time goes on.document management, automatedDocument draftingdocument analysis, easier legal research,Predictive analysis While lawyers may not be able to outsmart automated drafting of legal documents andAIs handling of basic but useful searchnew legal technology when it comes to even case outcome prediction. tasks is impressive but more impressive ispredicting case outcomes, they will continue A little further down the line, blockchainwhere AI can complete a task to a level ofto be essential in the process of drafting technology could revolutionise manyaccuracy beyond that of a lawyer. In 2017legal documents. aspects of legal practice, starting witha team of research scientists in ChicagoHowever, new legal technology is capable property law where the Land Registry isproduced a machine learning algorithm thatof revolutionising legal document drafting. piloting the transfer of property title toanalysed 240,000 justice votes and 28,000For instance, the outline of a legal document blockchain. cases decided by the United States Supremecan be generated more quickly through Court dating from 1816 to 2015. Applyingthe completion of a questionnaire. Lawyers Document analysis and E-discovery this analysis to past cases, it achieved 70.2%simply have to detail the purpose of the Large or multiple documents no longerprediction accuracy at the case outcomecontract and other relevant information. have to be read through by lawyers orlevel and 71.9% at the justice vote level.The software can also review an existing researchers and can be analysed andWhen comparing the modelscontract or other legal document and summarised by AI (with varying degrees ofperformance against humans, Daniel Kats,suggest any corrections or additions should depth), significantly streamlining processeslead author of the study at the Illinoisan important element appear to be missing. such as due diligence or disclosure. TheInstitute of Technology remarked that EveryNot unlike the spell checker on a word technology not only searches for importanttime weve kept score, it hasnt been aprocessor, this process would not change key words or phrases but can also identifyterribly pretty picture for humans. the document automatically; instead it the meaning and relevancy of a documentIn 2017 this was cutting-edge, but thisoutlines the areas that may be incorrect and according to a lawyers search terms. legal technology is now commerciallyproposes sections that should be included.'