The next legal frontier? Isn't it obvious? ...
Chrissie Lightfoot
Independent NED; Global Multi-Award Winning Entrepreneur, Lawyer, Legal Futurist, AI LawTech Pioneer, Legal Procurement intermediary, CEO, Consultant, Strategist, Marketeer, Brand builder, Author & Keynote Speaker
This is an edited and updated version of a two part blog written by me which was published as a two part series on the LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions portal on 6th & 13th June 2016. The blog posts (combined here) reflect an element of the content of my keynote speech I shared with delegates at the Lexis InterActionShare conference in April 2016. It is reproduced with kind permission.
At the recent LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions’ InterAction Share event in London, I shared with delegates my insight and advice in relation to the rise of smart technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), robots and machine learning in the legal ecosystem and how these technologies are being, and will be, deployed in the industry.
By addressing all of the above, it naturally led to my tackling the challenging question "what is the next legal frontier?"
It’s important to realise and understand that it is inevitable that the roles of lawyers, general counsel, marketers, business development, social media and CRM specialists etc. are going to change in light of such overwhelming technological advances.
The question that is hotly debated today is whether advanced technologies will support or replace lawyers. Well, the research speaks volumes. Note how we thought a few years ago compared to now. The answers to a recent survey in 2014/15 in relation to what law firm owners think about smart tech / AI today affecting their roles and businesses was very different compared to a handful of years ago back in 2010/11. The Altman Weil Flash Survey found that 35% of law firm leaders in the US could envision first-year associates being replaced by AI such as IBM’s Watson in the next five to ten years, with 47% predicting that fate for paralegals. Only 20% of these leaders are now sure that computers will never replace human practitioners. You can join the dots for yourself.
This is by no means a US-only phenomenon, with some firms in the UK and USA already seriously starting to make use of smart technology and AI. In the last 3 months alone here in the UK we've witnessed a rush of law firms revealing in legal media and mainstream press that they are deploying AI and robot automation within its business. What this means for the transiting roles of those lawyers in those firms, only time will tell.
But there’s always going to be a place for human subject matter experts (for now, anyway, maybe the next 10 years). Smart technology is not here to replace professionals yet, I say, but to make us better lawyers, or marketers etc. Smart technologies are forcing us to really use our brains and emotional intelligence. That’s a really good thing, surely?
Ideally, we need to work alongside ‘the machine’ as we’re not going to be able to halt its relentless march throughout the legal ecosystem. As a result of the AI infiltration and Armageddon, new roles for us all will evolve to the legal strategist, pricing agent-provocateur, social collaborator, social-human lawyer (i.e. the rainmaker), big data guru, intelligent e-personal assistant, iCyborg lawyer, RoboManager and so on.
Some of these roles may not even be done by lawyers. For example, smart (human) secretaries are now the bridge between lawyer and client in cultivating existing and new relationships. The AI virtual assistants available via KIM technologies will no doubt impact (support and/or replace) many roles - lawyers, General Counsels and support staff. The role of human CRM and marketing professionals will shift too – for example, intelligent relationship agent, relationship manager, the big data guru, the data artist, the data steward and such – supporting individual lawyers in tracking a contact through an individual’s entire life-cycle.
Against this backdrop, I was hugely pleased to witness Business Edge, the new business development module in Lexis InterAction, at the Share event, where I touched upon the potential impact of AI and smart technologies (such as Business Edge) on ALL job roles in law firms. They will enable support personnel (the real workers that make sure all the cogs turn properly and the boiler room remains stoked) to help fee earners (I still detest this term) manage their relationships throughout the life cycle of engagement with a contact. I have no doubt that smart technologies such as Lexis InterAction’s Business Edge capability will be a real boon to lawyers when their role in the months and years ahead will primarily be to:
- Interpret that the AI / Robot is right about the law; and
- Provide a supportive relationship to clients and General Counsel.
And the role of the ‘support worker’ will continue to be in supporting the lawyer in making the above happen extraordinarily well. In this new incarnation, law firms will not be in the business of law anymore, but in the business of supporting intelligent relationships and relationship management. Use of these kinds of technologies will enable the skill and experience of senior, associate and junior lawyers, and all support personnel to be focused on the parts that really matter – i.e. adding commercial value, finding solutions, rainmaking, interacting with prospects and clients, negotiating, persuading, advocating, doing deals, and being creative – rather than spending time on ‘mundane’ tasks, which usually account for 60-80% of time spent on any legal matter.
I am confident that LexisNexis Business Edge along with enterprise collaboration, data room software and content technologies (such as HighQ), cognitive computing, AI and machine learning technologies (such as the well reported and beginning to be well deployed technologies of IBM Watson, ROSS, KIM, RAVN, KIRA, Luminance, Neota Logic etc etc) will assist in firm growth and client loyalty as they (whether collectively or independently) help ease the pain and help support personnel market their algorithmic angels to existing and new clients as well as communicate and interact intelligently more often.
Wouldn't it be magical if some of these technologies could combine and collaborate to automate 100% of ALL aspects of some areas of legal service? Imagine what this could mean for the law firm, lawyer, general counsel and client?
I envisage that the future of law will witness the rise of more relationship agents, (in whatever guise - human or robot) and the majority of human roles will simply be to manage / project manage / over-lord and be intelligent about relationships via ROARing (Reaching Out And Relating) supported with exisitng and emerging smart technologies such as those noted above and Business Edge. CRM systems, such as Lexis InterAction, will facilitate the valuable intelligent relationships (human and robot).
To succeed in the future of law will require every individual to be imaginative and creative in how they approach existing and new clients by using the information on client relationships intelligently – facilitated via all kinds of technology at our fingertips. It is these kinds of things that will distinguish us humans from ‘the machine’. Embracing all these forms of technological deployment will free us all up to do the thing of real value – client humanness activities. Getting clients and keeping them. The thing ‘the machine’ can’t do... yet.
So, what is the next legal frontier? Isn’t it obvious? Cultivating intelligent relationships using human wisdom and machine intelligence, together. Period. It always was. It always will be...
Chrissie Lightfoot is named in the2015 list of the ‘World’s Top Female Futurists‘ and author of bestseller The Naked Lawyer: RIP to XXX – How to Market, Brand and Sell You! and its sequel Tomorrow’s Naked Lawyer: NewTech, NewHuman, NewLaw – How to be successful 2015 to 2045
Privacy Lead @ Endeavour Group | Tech & privacy lawyer | ex-HSF, ME, PwC | Privacy and data nerd | Responsible AI advocate
7yTo me, the most obvious point seems to be that so eloquently made by Daniel Katz in this brilliant video (https://vimeo.com/63008157) which everyone in the legal industry should watch. As Professor Katz notes - the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet. Why can't law firms be more like software companies and lawyers more like innovative technologists? The issue isn't so much about whether lawyers or robots will undertake legal work in the future (clearly, there'll be some combination of the two). The real question is how the law firm model will evolve to grapple with legacy people/culture, under investment in technology, the need to be more cost effective and customer-centric (despite current models incentivising the opposite) and inevitable competition from agile, tech driven start-ups.
Chief Legal Officer – Negotiating High-profile Deals (M&A), Corporate Governance, Sustainability, Ethics & Compliance, Risk Management, Dispute Resolution, Restructuring Legal Operating Models, Legal Design Thinking
7yIt is obvious indeed, even when you consider it is not getting easier to cross borders these days...;-) Cheers Chrissie
Independent NED; Global Multi-Award Winning Entrepreneur, Lawyer, Legal Futurist, AI LawTech Pioneer, Legal Procurement intermediary, CEO, Consultant, Strategist, Marketeer, Brand builder, Author & Keynote Speaker
7yHi Jeff. We're actually on the same page here. Much of what I speak and consult in ( and have written previously about) covers what you share here eg prevention not cure and much if what a human lawyer can do can be (and certainly will be) replaced by machines or orher roles. Have yoy read my book "Tomorrow's Naked Lawyer"? It's all in there re all the stuff you've raised here. It's also why the company I am currently involved with along with a number of businessmen have just launched Robot Lawyer Lisa too - http://robotlawyerlisa.com . So, in fact, we (you and I) actually agree on many aspects 😉👍
Husband, Race Car Driver, Manhattan Mixologist & Legal Rebel/Revolutionary/Activist at OneDegree Law
7yI don't disagree with your observations, but then again I don't agree. The rise of management of process & delivery of what we today call legal services will surely occur - but does this require lawyering? Need it be provided by lawyers? Much of what lawyers do today need not be done by lawyers -- the critical aspect of "lawyering" - the application of judgment or appearing in a forum where bar status is required - constitutes a fraction of what lawyers today do and lay claim to the protected right to do. The future you lay out continues to celebrate and promote the lawyer as the ultimate individual contributor, the provider of bespoke, highly individualized, custom solutions. I recognize that is surely the case - but only for a very small percentage of the legal work actually needed by individuals and by companies. Most legal work is quite mundane and standardized. There actually are answers to many questions - and they need not be customized in each and every situation. It's that customization and it's attendant costs, that have made access to justice unaffordable to many individuals and companies. It's that which forces many to "go naked" until there is a problem. It's that which the current legal ecosystem profits from and actually depends on as part of its economic model. But in reality, unless you're or lawyer or a patent troll, disputes and problems aren't an objective of individuals or businesses. Most don't want problems - and surely they don't want legal problems that are expensive to resolve. It's far better to avoid and prevent legal problems than manage them. The current legal ecosystem depends on those problems. The first wave of change looks at what legal work actually is going to be done. The second wave of change looks at who does that work - and yes, AI has a role here. The third wave of change looks at how that work is done and focuses on optimal management of legal work flows -- and AI is particularly applicable here. The fourth wave of change focuses on the prevention of legal problems, because It's this fourth wave that's obvious -- at least to me. But then again, I'm not a lawyer, I'm a business person who happens to have a law degree and 30 years in the legal trenches. Twenty one of those years were spent in-house where the focus was on helping the company achieve its objectives - not answer interesting questions of law or handle legal problems. No, we actually focused on preventing those legal problems through counselling as opposed to advocacy, through lessons learned as opposed to gladiator contests, through quality from process as opposed to having to being the smartest in the room.
Chief Product Officer | No-Code Expert | Driving digital transformation of Operations, HR, Legal and Professional Services | Exited Founder
7yA great piece. The advent of AI in all its forms will force the legal industry to concentrate on where they really add value to the client - 'the trusted advisor'. To understand which parts of the their work can be turned into technology driven products/services with a mixture of technological and human resource and which are relationship driven. Separately I think it is worth while considering how this effect the business of the law. We are tending to see this as a single technological revolution. Experience in other unrelated industries suggests that technology causes waves of disruption and opportunity. An obvious example is the music industry which went through waves of disruption with CD's, then digital downloads (iTunes, etc) and now again with streaming (e.g. Spotify and Apple Music). We are now only seeing the first wave of AI and machine learning driven disruption. The software companies Chrissie Lightfoot lists here are all fairly expensive tools concentrated on specific knowledge or competency domains (e.g. Ross and bankruptcy law, RAVN and contract analysis) accessible to a limited number of clients. What happens when that technology is cheaper, on demand and available to lawyers in all levels of firms?