Download Artificial Intelligence

You’ve got highly intelligent,
highly trained individuals doing
complex, nuanced work, who, all
of a sudden, have to deal with and
compete with AI that is more capable
than anything that’s come before
Gerard Frith
Artificial Intelligence: Innovation Through Automation
Artificial Intelligence
Supplement 2016
MODERN LAW
WELCOME
elcome to the Modern Law Magazine Artificial Intelligence
(AI) Supplement. As we enter 2017 it’s a good time to look
ahead to what the future will have in store for the legal
sector, and it seems undeniable now that AI will be, and is
already becoming, a game-changer in the profession.
To some people, the phrase Artificial Intelligence might conjure
images of apocalyptic futures ruled by rogue supercomputers and
Austrian bodybuilder androids. To more people, it probably means
futuristic, yet very attainable technologies, such as autonomous
vehicles. However, you might not realise that AI is already prevalent
in society, and that you probably already use it in your everyday life.
While online chatbots and the iPhone’s Siri can simplify the
organisation of your personal life, the capabilities of AI are much
wider reaching, and effective implementation of it can greatly benefit
a law firm. From answering enquiries to document automation and
much more, AI can potentially relieve lawyers from the less arduous
aspects of their jobs, freeing them up to focus on those tasks, such as
the client-facing duties, that only a human can truly accomplish.
AI is still in its relative infancy, and so this balance may change
in the future as AI becomes more advanced than it already is
as it evolves. One of the reservations legal professionals may
have about AI is the potential for it to ultimately replace lawyers.
However, the consensus in this supplement is that law is a highly
personal profession, one in which clients will place a great deal
W
of faith in their lawyers when facing life-changing situations, and
therefore the human touch will always be integral to the industry.
What is certain, however, based on the interviews and articles
in these pages, is that AI will play an important role in the future,
and the legal sector should embrace this, rather than attempt
to ignore it. It is not often a technology is introduced that
provides such obvious benefits to firms, and as a result the legal
profession can often be slow to adopt them when one does come
along. I hope this supplement will demonstrate how AI could help
enhance your law firm.
This futuristic focus continues in Modern Law Magazine, where
we interview Professor Richard Susskind, author and innovator,
about the evolution of AI.
Thanks to Matter for sponsoring this supplement, and to
everybody who has contributed to these pages. If you have any
comments or feedback I’d love to hear them. You can get in
touch via the details below, and we’ll be happy to talk to you (or
your chatbot!).
Brendan Gurrie,
Editor, Modern Law Magazine.
01765 600909 | @ModernBrendan | brendan@charltongrant.co.uk
CONTENTS
INTERVIEWS
FEATURES
6 Gerard Frith
While AI is seen as a great unknown by many in the legal
profession, one thing that is certain is that it can provide huge
benefits to firms that adopt it. Gerard Frith spoke to Modern
Law about the current applications of AI, and how its role
might change in the coming years.
10Prof. Luke Mason
New technologies like AI can greatly improve work flow and
efficiency for a law firm. Andrew Joint told Modern Law how
Kemp Little is utilising AI and how this helps them thrive in the
ever-changing world of technology law.
Katie Gibbs, Matter, on the ways in which Artificial Intelligence
will impact the legal sector, and how both the public and law
firms can adapt to these changes.
22How AI will deliver law firms improved profitability
Modern Law spoke to Professor Luke Mason about the role
AI will take in the legal profession, and how the sector must
find the balance between automation and human interaction.
14 Andrew Joint
20 2016 is the year of AI, so what does this mean for
the legal profession?
AI can complete time-consuming tasks, freeing up lawyers to
focus on those tasks that require the human touch. Ben Taylor,
Rainbird AI, discusses how this can be achieved.
24The Missing Piece of the Puzzle –
The Role of the Legal Engineer
Catherine Bamford, Founder of BamLegal, describes the
increasingly important role of the legal engineer and explains
that it’s not just about being a techie.
26 Improving the craft of conveyancing
Hugo-Pickford Wardle discusses why he feels the
conveyancing process is ripe for automation, and how doing
so could improve the system for conveyancers and their
clients, and have implications for the entire law profession.
28 I wouldn’t start from here…
Building a sustainable AI solution from the inside out
30Case Study
Editor
Brendan Gurrie
December 2016
Project Manager
John Margett
Business to Consumer, AI to Human
Editorial Assistant
Liam Lambert
Events Sales
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Artificial Intelligence Supplement 03
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You’ve got highly intelligent, highly
trained individuals who know that the stuff
they do is complex, and they’re now dealing
with AI that are more capable than anything
that’s come before them
INTERVIEW
Gerard Frith
While AI is seen as a great unknown by many in the legal profession, one thing
that is certain is that it can provide huge benefits to firms that adopt it. Gerard
Frith spoke to Modern Law about the current applications of AI, and how its
role might change in the coming years.
Q
A
What are the features of a typical AI system in 2016?
outperformed junior lawyers and paralegals when they have very
large sets of documents to process for litigation.
There is no such thing as a typical AI, because everything is
advancing so quickly. The term is mostly used to describe deep
learning technologies and bots. Deep learning technologies are
focused on things like visual perception. Google has done a lot of
work with this - an AI system can look at a picture and say: there are
two glasses of wine and a pizza. It is automatic labelling of pictures
and their content. Google has also done a lot of work with face
recognition, and their systems are now better at recognizing who
people are. It’s very interesting, and about 90% accurate.
We’re also seeing the introduction of ‘Big Data’ techniques.
There are things like the Lex Machina service, which is actually
better than expert litigators in predicting the results of court
decisions. Corporate lawyers in due-diligence work have used
other technologies, and they’ve been very effective. There are big
opportunities here to productise professional services in general,
but also law specifically. The problem with law has always been
that if you want to double your revenue, you have to double your
staff of professionals, in order to generate that billable work.
They have also done a lot with general problem solving and deep
learning. For example, they asked all of their Google data centres:
what is the optimum way to consider the power supply to one of
my data centres? They ended up saving about 25% of their energy
bill. Considering they’ve got more servers than anyone else in the
world, that’s a big deal.
If you look at companies like Facebook or Google, they don’t have
the same kind of cost structures, and they’re very happy to push
margins up to ninety percent, in some cases. Their margins tend
to grow as they scale, because they’re able to productise more
aspects of the work. We’re starting to see this now in professional
services; any high volume task that requires judgement is very apt
for this kind of automation. This leaves professionals with more
time to focus on jobs that need a little bit more sophistication, and
will generate higher value for the company.
Then there are bots, which is AI you can have a conversation with.
The real focus here is customer support. A lot of the web chat
you engage with when you contact a customer support centre
will be with an AI, rather than a human. They’re getting very good
at handling conversations within a tight domain - if you want a
conversation about your parcel delivery, they’ll be pretty good, but
if you want to chat about Nietzsche, they won’t be so good.
The other big area is decision making for things like management,
governance and compliance obligations, which are increasingly
becoming stress points within big organizations.
There are a lot of expert systems coming into the market that
can be used to catch the knowledge of existing experts within
the company and subsequently structure a framework of rules.
The systems can automatically process whether something
is compliant or not, or if something is meeting government
regulations. They are very good at dealing with ambiguity as well,
not just supplying a hard set of rules, and they’re great not only for
improvement of contracts, but for reviewing historic contracts to
highlight any problems that may have occurred.
Q
A
If the work is reviewing legal agreements and you’re charging
£300 an hour, and it takes ten hours to do, you could automate
the process to make it take two hours, resulting in a huge increase
in your productivity. You can charge a lower rate for the work, but
you’re not going to charge five-times less.
AI is currently not good at
demonstrating deep empathy, and
there are certain aspects of law
where a personal touch is critical
How can law firms utilize AI to improve their workflow and
efficiency?
There are already a lot of tools out there that can be used
in preparation of litigation. Some intelligence systems have
December 2016
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 07
INTERVIEW
Conveyancing is very much open to the opportunity of automation.
It will remove a lot of frustration and make processes faster and more
positive for consumers
On a day-to-day level, there are a lot of general purpose AIs that
are very useful as personal assistants. I use an AI to make all of my
meeting arrangements. She, or it, will have correspondence with
people I need meetings with, and automatically look for appropriate
travel arrangements. It can write emails to set these meetings up, and
understand the emails that come back from clients and partners.
Some of the more interesting and advanced areas here are again
to do with decision support. We would be working with a law
firm to, for example, understand how they can answer medium
complexity questions from clients that might take administrators
two days to process. An AI can do that work more quickly, so a
lawyer can then review it before it goes out. I’m talking about
questions like: ‘Is a calculation right?’ It’s a medium complexity
question, the answer to which would need to contain research, and
references to case law, and internal firm precedents.
Q
A
How will AI affect the everyday legal consumer?
What AI should be able to do is increase professional productivity.
If you take that last example, in those low to medium complexity
situations, AI can provide decision support and research. They can
allow professionals to focus more of their time on client relationships
and can allow businesses to cover a larger number of clients. I think
cost will be one of the key things here - cost pressure, in general, is
one of the key problems in law at the moment. We’ll see quite an
interesting combination of lower costs and better service.
Conveyancing is very much open to the opportunity of automation.
It will remove a lot of frustration and make processes faster and
more positive for consumers. I think AI will be enormously helpful in
improving consumer attitudes towards the legal profession.
There are also some situations where we’ll see the removal of the
need for lawyers in certain aspects of law. We’re already seeing
that to some degree in document assembly systems, where we
have things like Contract Express, that can generate high quality
documents based on interactions with a user. They were originally
designed for the legal profession, but now we’re seeing them
available online for other uses.
Q
Do you ever see AI completely replacing legal professionals,
or will there always need to be a human element?
Matter
Matter are the leading AI Consultancy in the UK. We
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the challenges being faced.
08 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
A
I was asked this question at a conference hosted by Kemp Little,
recently, and my answer was booed! We are already seeing a sixty
percent reduction in the number of core staff, particularly PAs, at law
firms. This isn’t just in law either, it’s across the board. Paralegals will be
replaced to some extent, that’s inevitable. The Future of Employment
study by the University of Oxford - which looked at the impact of
automation on various professions - put paralegals and legal assistants
in the highest risk category, with a 94% chance of being automated.
Conversely, lawyers were in the lowest risk category.
We’re a long way off in some areas. AI is currently not good at
demonstrating deep empathy, and there are certain aspects of
law where a personal touch is critical. In areas where intellectual
processes are more important than personal interaction, jobs are at
higher risk. Culturally, we are not in a position where the presence of
a person in a negotiation situation can be substituted for an AI.
In the short term, paralegals and legal assistants will simply have
more tools at their disposal.
Q
A
Are there forms of AI in other sectors that the legal
profession should be utilising?
There are two interesting areas. One is the use of big data
applications, and I’d group deep learning with that. Deep
learning is exceptionally good at understanding big lumps of
data. A really simple example is Google’s DeepMind system. They
set it to get really good at the video games Breakout and Space
Invaders. They didn’t tell it what the rules of the games were, they
just let it play the games, and it worked out how to play them well
within an hour. It took two hours to get good, and after five hours
it was better than any human had been.
That’s the key thing though: it wasn’t taught to do it, it taught
itself by observing others. There are lots of opportunities for these
big data, deep learning systems to digest the corpus of law, and
to start offering advice on that basis. We’ve seen this with IBM’s
Watson system, which has learned about oncology. There are
so many new publications on cancer that it’s impossible for any
individual to keep up with it. Watson can keep up with them, and it
can help cancer specialists to diagnose earlier and prescribe more
effectively. They even noticed that Watson’s diagnoses were 20%
more accurate than those of expert oncologists. It’s actually now
functioning as a doctor, doing consultations with patients.
With that in mind, there’s nothing to say the same couldn’t be
done with law.
The other area is very different: customer experience. In consumer
facing law, I would expect to see the growth of bots being
interfaced for case management and case progression. What
we’ve been allowed to do is provide a 24/7 service, which would
be very appealing to people. Bots can be used to provide a first
line of support for customers.
Q
A
What are the challenges of implementing an AI system, and
how can they be addressed?
The biggest challenge is dealing with the disbelief that it
works. You’ve got highly intelligent, highly trained individuals
who know that the stuff they do is complex, and they’re now
dealing with AI more capable than anything that’s come before
them. There is also the fear that they might work too well, and
have too big of an impact on the profession.
December 2016
INTERVIEW
Some intelligence systems have outperformed junior lawyers
and paralegals when they have very large sets of documents to process
for litigation
Other issues include risk. If you’re implementing decision support
or compliance monitoring, there’s a question about whether a
human or an AI is more trustworthy. People feel more safe when
they know a human is dealing with them.
Nobody programs a lot of the systems we see now. Take selfdriving cars for example: when one of these cars runs somebody
over, people want to know how liable the car’s developer is. This
is a misunderstanding of how automation works. There is no
developer – the systems learn. They look at situations from which
they base their decisions on.
What makes this difficult is that once a system has learned, you can’t
open it up and work out what it has learned, and therefore learn from
it. This makes it hard to ask an AI why it’s done something. You can
ask a junior that, and they’ll understand and give you an explanation.
But this is an entirely new form of relationship.
Q
A
Why have law firms struggled to keep up with the
technological pace seen in other sectors?
Aspects of this are to do with legal education. Until recently,
there hasn’t been much tech-presence in legal education. For
most other subjects, tech is used as a part of the degree process.
Technology also hasn’t served law very well, until recently. With the
exception of systems like email and word processing, there hasn’t
been a real need to see technology within law. But AI has taken
everyone by surprise – it isn’t well understood or well adopted
within any profession or industry, with the exception of the digital
industry that created it. Cost is also an issue - although there are
plenty of big law firms with money to invest, there are also a lot of
small firms without the budget or in-house specialists to invest in AI.
Q
A
What will be the ‘next big thing’ in legal technology, and
how will this alter the way that legal services are delivered?
The greatest pressure in legal practice is cost. The second
biggest is customer service. Those two issues together mean
that the ‘next big thing’ is process automation. It just makes sense
to build efficiency into the core processes of the things you do. We
have technology that can apply deductive reasoning and can look
at nuances in the way experts make decisions, and we have bots
that allow us to manage routine customer interactions.
Q
A
What is next for Matter?
We are looking for innovative partners in law to help with the
process of automation. We’re very interested in proving that
these technologies work in smaller areas, before they can be rolled
out across larger practices. We’re tech agnostic at this firm, so we
work with a whole bunch of different technology product firms,
which allows us to work across a number of different industries. Many
of the interesting things here are not going to be achieved by one
piece of technology alone, but through working with professionals
to see how they want to take their firm forward. They can combine
different technologies, like AI personal assistant bots, with more
complex case management and research tools. This will let us build
firms of the future that can reconsider how they are going to use the
skills available to them in order to gain a competitive advantage.
December 2016
Gerard Frith
Gerard has more than 20-years experience in the artificial
intelligence and management consultancy fields. He
graduated from his first degree in AI in 1995, then worked
for Deloitte designing and building AI solutions for financial
services and fraud protection. Later, he designed medical
AI systems to analyse and make recommendations against
large corpuses of patient data. Over the last 5 years his focus
has been on designing customer experience and process
automation solutions across a range of industries (legal,
insurance, health, government, marketing) using AI, especially
expert systems, natural language, and bot technologies.
Gerard Frith is Chairman of Matter and Chief Strategy Officer
of Chelsea Apps Factory. For further information phone
020 8242 4300, or visit experiencematter.co.uk or
chelsea-apps.com
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 09
The ‘heroic’
aspects of legal practice,
of spotting injustices
and demanding new
approaches to reflect new
social and technological
realities, are human
activities
INTERVIEW
Luke Mason
Modern Law spoke to Professor Luke Mason about the role AI will take in the
legal profession, and how the sector must find the balance between automation
and human interaction.
Q
A
Which, if any, elements of human input in the legal
profession will never be replaced by AI?
AI is supremely capable in terms of deductive reasoning.
Most aspects of the legal profession’s tasks can be seen as
having this element as their principal component. This suggests
that almost all human aspects of legal practice could be replaced.
However, while lawyers might overestimate the uniqueness of their
‘intelligence’, they probably also underestimate how important it
is that humans carry out many of those tasks. Those legal roles
where we expect a human being to take moral responsibility
for a decision, such as those involving adjudication, cannot be
readily replaced by a computer. This is not because AI is incapable
of making such decisions, nor because we cannot blame it for
errors (we could have a system of insurance for such mistakes
for instance), but because law is a cultural artifact, like art or
literature, which we want humans to produce, even if computers
are equally capable of doing so. We all, lawyers and non-lawyers,
surely demand that humans take authorship of certain legal roles
and acts. It would be within the technological capabilities of AI to
carry out these tasks, but it would not fit with what we demand of
a legal system at all times.
Equally, the deductive reasoning of AI essentially reduces legal
practice to the prediction, and therefore replication, of previous
outcomes, ensuring consistency but also entrenching errors and
accentuating conservatism. The ‘heroic’ aspects of legal practice,
of spotting injustices and demanding new approaches to reflect
new social and technological realities, are human activities.
Equally, the deeply creative elements, which characterise certain
applications of legal rules, mean that much of what lawyers do
is in fact less deductive than we might first think. This all means
that while very few legal roles cannot be mimicked by AI, the legal
profession should rightly demand that they retain authorship of
many aspects of legal practice, at least at a supervisory level, as in
practice there is no clear delineation of the creative and deductive
aspects of legal practice.
The tasks which remain in human hands in the legal profession will
not do so because of some skills that computers are not capable
of mimicking or even improving, but rather because lawyers can
convince people of that value that humans should be taking such
decisions. However, what is inevitable is that even these tasks, like
all elements of legal practice, will move into a ‘post-human’ phase
of legal practice. Even those services provided by humans will be
December 2016
done with significant help from AI, to the extent that it becomes
very difficult to distinguish between those elements that are the
result of human input, decision or thought, and those aspects
which are the result of AI. This poses a whole range of problems
that have not been fully considered by policy makers, lawyers,
technologists or service providers in this field.
Which risks associated with AI might face law firms, and
how can these be circumvented?
The adoption of AI will pose problems for perceptions
regarding the real value of the product offered, and might
also cause clients to wonder what they are paying so much
for, when the services being provided are simply automated.
Positioning the service offered as either a far more streamlined
one on the one hand, or, on the other hand, a more augmented
service incorporating strategic advice and consultancy services
might be a way of responding to this tension. Lawyers might
end up responding to their growing obsolescence by reinventing
themselves as more erudite providers of beefed up services, for
businesses involving a more diversified basket of commercial
products and services. If mergers and acquisitions lawyers can
also advise on strategy in that field, their product becomes far
more marketable again.
In terms of the actual quality of the product and legal services
provided following the widespread adoption of AI, there is
an acute problem posed by technology in all fields. If lawyers
delegate many of their tasks to AI, their legal skills can become
duller through lack of practice, and they will tend to rely on AI to
Q
A
I think many off-the-shelf
legal services will be available
through glossy graphic user
interfaces like many other products
offered digitally, a lot of which
incorporate AI
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 11
INTERVIEW
Digital natives are proudly part of what we might call the first
truly post-human generation, where people are happy to carry out a huge
variety of tasks with massive input from AI
get things right. This very fact will make it harder for lawyers to
spot or correct errors that AI produces. It is very difficult to know
how to resolve this problem, as the best way to develop legal skills
is to use them. Firms will have to be aware of this issue and try and
develop proxies to maintain and improve legal skills.
Why has the legal sector historically been slow to adopt new
technologies, and will there be similar resistance to AI?
All regulated professions have their rent-seeking tendencies,
and there is of course resistance to technologies that people
see as a threat to their job, or even those that push them out of
their comfort zone. Lawyers might see AI as the Luddites saw
the automation of the textiles industry, which would certainly
make it more likely that there is a continued resistance. The
legal profession is also inherently conservative in its in-built
assumptions and values; in some ways conservatism is the essence
of the Rule of Law, so this is to be expected. Law firms have
also traded effectively on their traditional, and therefore reliable,
image, meaning change has not been driven by demand. The
deregulation of legal services provision opens up the possibility of
greater disruptive business practices however, and a heightened
environment of competition might result in new entrants shaking
things up in this regard. There is a universal human tendency
to view intelligence as uniquely human in some sense, and
lawyers will likely resist any wholesale attempt to conspicuously
replace their jobs with AI. What might also occur, however, is the
concerted mobilisation of the legal lobby to regulate or restrict the
use of AI in certain legal areas.
What other technologies should the legal sector be seeking
to adopt in the future?
The introduction of AI into legal practice will almost certainly
see a realignment of the nature of the core services provided
by lawyers, with law firms forced to provide an augmented service
more akin to management consultancy or advisors on risk, in order
to add value to the provision of services fulfilled by AI. This might
require the legal profession to adopt many of the technologies
used in those fields, in particular IT which is capable of dealing
with complex numerical calculations. What the legal industry will
also need to develop is the ability to ‘talk’ to coders and code itself,
to ensure that law is capable of having the knowledge and syntax
which allows it to impact on the legal outcomes produced by AI.
It will also need to ensure that it can deal appropriately with legal
questions posed by the regulation of other technologies driven
by AI, including questions of evidence, causation and standards
Q
A
Q
A
Law is a cultural artifact,
like art or literature, which we
want humans to produce, even if
computers are equally capable of
doing so
12 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
of care, for instance. Law will very quickly need to come to terms
not only with AI doing law, but also law regulating AI. There is a
real danger of an unwitting deference here, which the law often
develops when called upon to regulate an area that it does not
fully understand. This damages both the credibility of the law and
the field in question in the long run.
How will AI systems evolve in the coming years?
Q
A
The ability of AI systems to engage in complex, non-linear
reasoning and problem-solving while also being able to learn
is increasing exponentially. This poses deep problems for law,
because AI is moving close to the point where it can carry out
even the most complex of tasks, such as deep legal reasoning in what we call ‘hard cases’. The advent of quantum computing
might signal an additional layer of complexity and potential in
AI, although the precise range of tasks which quantum-based AI
might be able to deal with is still speculative.
Is enough being done to educate law students about new
and emerging technologies and how these can be beneficial
in their future careers?
Almost certainly not, given that legal education is still
largely dominated by the idealised vision of Nineteenth
Century common law that has characterised it for the last 100
years or so, for better or worse. However, if human lawyers are to
maintain their added value as providers of legal services that can
outstrip those provided by AI, it is desirable that legal education
strengthens its focus on creativity, critical thinking and commercial
and social awareness. Any focus on AI should probably take two
forms: an understanding of the growing role of AI in the general
nature and practice of law on the one hand, and an engagement
with the practicalities of providing legal services with the help
of AI during the vocational stage of legal training on the other. I
cannot envisage formal education adopting this approach in the
near future however, and firms must invest in this training.
What are some of the ways digital natives entering the legal
profession will disrupt and alter the sector?
The big thing here is that digital natives are proudly part of
what we might call the first truly post-human generation,
where people are happy to carry out a huge variety of tasks with
massive input from AI, where it becomes almost impossible to
distinguish between the human input and the computer input. This
will make them culturally far more comfortable with incorporating
AI-based practices into their own working practices. However,
it also makes them more susceptible to trusting the outcomes
reached by AI and failing to spot conclusions that they themselves
might ordinarily find unsatisfactory. This is not so much a question
of digital natives being familiar with the use of IT, whose increasing
use in legal procedure is often confused with the growing impact
of AI on law. The introduction of IT changes the speed and mode
of delivery of legal communication, and makes redundant the need
for legal processes and services to take place anywhere in the
physical world, instead taking place in cyberspace. However, this
does not change the fundamental nature of legal services or legal
practice. The new generation of lawyers are not only digital natives
in that sense, but rather are also what we might call AI-natives in
Q
A
Q
A
December 2016
INTERVIEW
It is very easy to develop a
moral panic connected to AI, and
there is already, quite reasonably,
a high degree of suspicion of the
legal sector
that they have incorporated it into their daily reasoning processes. If
millennials make post-human decisions regarding sex and romance,
deeply personal issues, using the AI of online dating, they will have
no qualms or difficulty in doing this at work in a law firm.
Does the legal sector need to modernise its image, through
the implementation of technologies like AI, for example, and
if so, how else can it achieve this?
The legal sector will ultimately thrive on trust. Any image that
is developed through the use of AI must take advantage of
the neutral and unbiased nature of AI, while retaining a focus on
the high-trained and justice-focused nature of human components
of the system or the firm. This is a complex balance. It is very easy
to develop a moral panic connected to AI, and there is already,
quite reasonably, a high degree of suspicion of the legal sector, as
it operates in a field which people do not understand and which
regulates and impacts upon their lives so obviously.
Will legal consumers be quick to accept AI systems in
law, particularly as they are used for more advanced B2C
correspondence?
I think many off-the-shelf legal services will be available
through glossy graphic user interfaces like many other
products offered digitally, a lot of which incorporate AI. The ease
of use of such delivery dictates that clients will accept this, if they
are sure about the quality of the product that is offered. Those
clients who want a more bespoke service and B2C correspondence
will undoubtedly also demand a greater added value from legal
products in the future, including strategy and consulting to go with
their purely legal advice or services. This should reserve a place
for legal services with a human face, but they will often be more
‘boutique’ in nature. Of course, the non-legal aspects of client-facing
parts of the legal sector can also be carried out by non-lawyers in
certain circumstances. If AI is carrying out much of the legal tasks,
this role becomes more one of customer care in any case.
How will the role of the lawyer change as more advanced AI
systems get introduced into the legal profession?
Law will face a deep challenge. The supervision of these
processes will become increasingly important, but lawyers
will increasingly lose the ability, practice and confidence to
second guess the superior deductive reasoning of AI. The greatest
challenge for the law in general is in convincing the world at large
that having human oversight and human responsibility is a good
thing if we want an accountable and just legal system, even if that
means that some elements of it might be more capricious and
more prone to error.
Q
A
Q
A
Q
A
December 2016
Luke Mason
Luke Mason is a philosopher and academic lawyer whose
research and expertise focuses on the nature of legal
reasoning, and on the relationship between law, science and
technology. He is currently working on the links between
law and quantum mechanics. From January 2017, Luke is
Senior Lecturer in Law and Theory at St Mary’s University,
London. He was previously Lecturer in Law and Philosophy
and Director of Learning and Teaching at the University of
Surrey. He has held academic positions in various countries,
and has also worked as a government policy adviser. He has
won various awards for law teaching, including the coveted
national prize ‘Law Teacher of the Year’ in 2014.
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 13
As a junior lawyer in this millennium, it was still common
practice even in large city law firms that drafts of documents were
exchanged via post, with changes made in pen
INTERVIEW
Andrew Joint
New technologies like AI can greatly improve work flow and efficiency for a law
firm. Andrew Joint told Modern Law how Kemp Little is utilising AI and how this
helps them thrive in the ever-changing world of technology law.
Q
A
Could you tell me about the AI systems you employ, and the
benefits this has brought to your firm?
Within Kemp Little we’ve already been using AI systems in a
couple of different ways. Both have involved document review
activities looking at a large volume of contracts and analysing
these agreements. The analysis performed relates to specific
issues we’ve asked the AI to report on; in our case we’ve had the
AI looking at agreements and reviewing and analysing for ‘Brexit’
and ‘Data Processing’ related issues.
The AI allows us to analyse a large volume of agreements quickly.
This lets us perform tasks for our clients more efficiently. It also
allows us to ‘free-up’ the time of our lawyers who do not need to
be involved in some of the more mundane aspects of legal work
and can focus their time on analysing and problem-solving, where
they can bring real benefit to clients.
Q
A
What was it that encouraged you to implement an AI
system?
We are a technology specialist law firm, where technology is
at the heart of our business. Part of our role is to keep firmly
abreast of all evolutions in technology and how they are likely
to impact businesses and the wider world. As such, we’ve noted
the rise of available AI from mere science-fiction to mainstream
and enterprise-ready solutions over the last few years. We are
confident that AI is going to have a seismic impact across near
enough all industries and all aspects of society. Whilst AI might
challenge and threaten existing business structures, it also brings
huge benefits and opportunities to every business. As such, to
ignore or reject such an impacting and revolutionary technology
would be akin to standing like King Canute and attempting to
turn back the tide of change - it is coming, whether you want it or
not - and additionally risk missing out on the benefits that can be
achieved with embracing such change.
Whilst no-one seems to have any firm certainty on the impact
of AI in businesses or society, there are some widely espoused
concerns regarding the impact on the modern human workforce
due to AI use. However, we think AI allows us to use tools to
remove some aspects of the lawyer’s role, allowing them to
focus on the more interesting and challenging parts of the role –
typically those focused on analysis and problem solving and the
client-facing aspects of the role.
December 2016
Q
A
What challenges did you face when implementing AI?
Our experience shows that there are two key challenges with
implementing an AI.
The first key challenge of the AI implementation, compared to
other implementations we’ve seen, is in relation to the learning/
training the AI needs during implementation. Typically in IT, you
do not expend energies in teaching the IT solution what to do,
you simply set up and interface/use the solution as it is set up
to perform. With the AI implementations we have been through,
there was a period where we needed to ‘train’ the AI with our
approach and styles so it can learn to replicate the activity. As
an IT customer, this is a different sort of implementation activity,
where there is a critical dependency on us, the customer, during
the implementation.
The second key challenge is in relation to trust. AI it is not just
a tool for checking spelling or cross-referencing, it is actually
reviewing and presenting preliminary advice. As the activity of
the AI is more significant than other IT applications, the lawyer’s
inherent conservatism around trusting activities we’ve not
ourselves performed arises. Part of the implementation challenge
is getting people to ‘trust’ the AI and understand what it can, and
just as importantly cannot, do.
Whilst AI might challenge
and threaten existing business
structures, it also brings huge
benefits and opportunities to
every business
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 15
INTERVIEW
We are confident that AI is going to have a seismic impact across
near enough all industries and all aspects of society
Q
A
Are enough law firms effectively utilising technology, and
how do you see this changing in the future?
Well, there seems to have been an increased amount of
legal press coverage in the last couple of months regarding
headline-making news of law firms using AI solutions. Often, our
experience of these to date is that the solutions and the uptake is
somewhat more narrow/limited.
Law has traditionally been a conservative profession in terms
of wholesale/radical changes in how it organises its business
structures, or the methods it uses to provide services. As a junior
lawyer in this millennium, it was still common practice even in large
city law firms that drafts of documents were exchanged via post,
with changes made in pen. So it is not surprising that the pace of
law firm investment and use of AI technologies has been slower
than in some other sectors to date. In the ‘professional services’
world, the accountants and consultants have typically been
quicker and better adopters of newer technologies than lawyers,
who have lagged behind in IT use to perform legal services and
run their businesses.
However, the good thing is that AI technology is revolutionary.
Because of that revolutionary effect, it can have the impact of
making a lot of previous IT development and use obsolete. It
has the potential to have a uniform impact on the preceding
ways of working for all professional services professions, not just
the lawyers, which means that lawyers need not be left behind
in its use, as the solutions which are arising are arriving for all
professional services organisations at the same time.
Clients are operating under increasing pressures relating to time
and cost on their own businesses. They quite rightly feel that
lawyers should not be isolated from these pressures as well. Lawyers
therefore need to be prepared to have solutions to the provision
of legal services which show that they are efficient and effective in
terms of time, price and quality. Technology is part of the solution
which clients will be demanding (if they are not already demanding
it!). But technology isn’t the only part. The qualitative aspect of the
provision of legal service depends on a lot of human-based input,
but technology can be an important part, and as an important part I
can see many law firms focusing on it in the future.
The qualitative aspect of the
provision of legal service depends
on a lot of human-based input, but
technology can be an important part
Q
A
Are there AI practises utilised in other industries that the
legal sector could adopt?
The most obvious area of immediate AI use within the legal
sectors relates to those time/document ‘heavy’ review tasks
which most often arise within corporate M&A tasks: the due
diligence phase, and in large litigation matters, the discovery
phase. Many of the activities within these phases feel like activities
that could learn from other sectors’ use of large review and
analytical AI technologies, to streamline and make the process
more efficient.
One area prevalent in other industries, which feels like the next
step for the legal sector, is in relation to the AI performing tasks
that involve client interaction, such as a ‘robo-advice’ function
where the voice/communication from the human lawyer is
replaced by an AI generated conversation. To date, these
technologies have made it into the mainstream consciousness
via our interactions with Apple’s ‘Siri’, Amazon Echo’s ‘Alexa’, or
customer service centres regarding your TV subscription invoice.
Currently, I don’t think people are comfortable with machines
presenting significant advice; travel directions are fine, advice on
their will or divorce perhaps less so. However, the legal services
sector will be watching society for the point where it can provide
its ‘trusted advisor’ role via AI in such a way that the recipient is
comfortable with that delivery method.
Q
A
Are there any risks associated with AI, and how does Kemp
Little defend against these?
If you watch ‘Terminator’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ or the
‘Matrix’, you would imagine there are umpteen risks in using
AI, including to human life/existence. However, away from the
fictional sensationalism, the simple fact is that the provision of
any legal service comes with a risk. Will a human lawyer misread a
sentence, make a typo, forget an important piece of statute, etc.?
These risks exist with the AI who will undertake the task currently
being performed by the lawyer, but in many ways that risk is
mitigated by the statistical protection that technology is typically
less error-prone than humans at many of the review tasks.
In relation to protections that we as a business implement, the key
aspect is that we retain a human involvement and intervention in
the AI activity. Obviously the AI can, and will, be set up so that it
relays to a human certain situations/challenges that it faces, for
example where it cannot read a scan of a document completely,
where pages are missing, etc. At these points a human can
intervene and deal. In addition, where we’ve used the AI to review
and analyse, we then have that analysis reviewed by a lawyer who
isn’t repeating the exercise but is reviewing the output for quality
assurance.
Q
A
What are some of the differences in specialising in media
and technology in comparison to other areas of legal work?
Technology law is really like no other aspect of the
legal profession, simply because of the pace at which
it can change. We are faced with so many ground breaking
developments and changes on a monthly basis; take the last 15
years, where we’ve faced the rise of the internet, mobile devices,
apps, the cloud, big data, 3D printing, etc., and now we are dealing
with AI. It means that we are in a constant state of applying the
known and existing parts of law to new technologies. We are then
16 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
December 2016
INTERVIEW
trying to find answers to the queries and the problems the new
technologies create without any firm legal precedent to rely on;
it is all new! It means it is a challenge for the legal advisor who
has to think around issues and be creative where in many aspects
there is a lack of certainty and a lot of potential for change and
development; it doesn’t suit every type of lawyer.
Q
A
Which issues of data protection and privacy arise when
specialising in media and technology?
Technology law is really
like no other aspect of the legal
profession, simply because of the
pace at which it can change
Data protection has been a key influence on the IT industry
in Europe since the 1995 EU Data Privacy Directive was
implemented (in the UK via the Data Protection Act 1998 which has
been in force from 2000). At the point where more data was able to
be collected, stored, analysed and monetised than at any previous
point in history, the legislation arrived to dictate behaviours around
many of these activities for data relating to the individual.
It is very unusual to deal with an IT arrangement these days
without data protection/privacy legislation concerns being at the
very least a minor consideration, and typically far more dealdefining than that. In addition, the individuals’ understanding of
the value of their data and concerns about its use/misuse has
meant that as consumers we have great demands on providers
of any services as to how they use and look after our data. Data
protection is an important part of how customers view their
service providers, and events such as data hacks/loss are now very
newsworthy and business impacting.
Typically, the data protection/privacy impact in technology
matters we deal with arises due to the following:
• The method as to how the data was obtained, and whether it
was lawful and gathered in a manner that permits its onward
intended use.
• How it is stored and used, is it being looked after appropriately,
and where it is being sent? Technology has shrunk the planet
and it has meant that often people want to send data globally,
and the law often intervenes in relation to how that can and
cannot be done.
Q
A
Do you have plans to utilise AI in more ways in the future?
Yes, we are always on the lookout for how we can better
provide legal services to our clients and make Kemp Little
a better place to work for our lawyers and support staff. AI will
throw up further chances to do that, and as they come along we
will review the opportunity and implement where we agree there
is a benefit.
Q
A
What else does the future hold for Kemp Little in terms of
technology use?
Via some projects we’ve been working on, some of our
lawyers (who happen to also be pretty ‘techy’ – we
attract that sort!) developed certain tools to aid in their tasks,
particularly where they were being asked to perform activities
that could be better undertaken by software. We realised, or
clients have told us, that these tools have commercial application,
and we are also looking to see how we can better develop and
then roll-out these tools.
December 2016
Andrew Joint
Andrew is an experienced technology and outsourcing
lawyer who works within a variety of sectors including
heavily regulated industries. He has particular and deep
experience in Cloud, BPO, business transformational, IoT
and complex technology contracting and advising. He is also
heavily involved in emerging areas of technology such as AI. He is recognised in Chambers & Partners as a notable IT law
practitioner - described as being “phenomenally good”.
He is the editor of the Computer Contracts chapter of Sweet
& Maxwell’s “Practical Commercial Precedents”. He is also
Chairman and a committee member of the London Group of
the Society for Computers and Law.
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 17
ARE YOU
FUTURE PROOF?
WEDNESDAY 8TH MARCH
08.30 – 09.15
REGISTRATION & BREAKFAST
9.15 – 9.30
CHAIRMEN’S WELCOME
Chris Harris, MD, Lawyer Checker
Tony Piccirillo, Partner, AVRillo
9.30 – 10.15
KEYNOTE ADDRESS - Where is the UK housing market heading?
Speaker announced soon
10.15 – 11.00
PANEL 1 – Client Care: Breaking down barriers
Andy Foster, Panel Member, Legal Services Consumer Panel (LSCP)
Darren Cox, Ombudsman, Legal Ombudsman
Sheila Kumar, Chief Executive, Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC)
Graham Murphy, Product Manager, The Law Society
Paula Higgins, Founder & CEO, HomeOwners Alliance
11.00 – 11.45
MORNING REFRESHMENTS
11.45 – 12.45
PANEL 2 – Managing your firm
Paul Saunders, Managing Director, Legal Eye
Rob Hailstone, Founder, Bold Legal Group
Eddie Goldsmith, Conveyancing Association
Emma Vigus, Director, Professional Indemnity, Howden UK Group Limited
David Knowles, Head of Financial Crime, Paycasso
12.45 – 13.30
PANEL 3 – Innovation: shaking up the conveyancing market
Mike Ockenden, Director, Thornby Associates
Mark Montgomery, Customer Strategy & Marketing Director, My Home Move
Additional panellists to be confirmed
13.30 – 14.30
LUNCH
14.30 – 15.30
PANEL 4 – Best Practice in Conveyancing
Richard Rickwood, CEO, Friday’s Move
Stephen Murray, Business Development Director, PSG
Sarah Tucker, Your Move
Additional panellists to be confirmed
15.30-16.20
Panel 5 - Leading the Field
Tom Bridge, Director of Conveyancing, Keoghs
Additional panellists to be confirmed
16.20-16.30
CLOSING REMARKS
Chris Harris, MD, Lawyer Checker
Tony Piccirillo, Partner, AVRillo
16.30
CLOSE
CONTACT
Sponsorship enquiries please contact Kate McKittrick | kate@charltongrant.co.uk
Event enquiries please contact Ellie Campbell | ellie.campbell@charltongrant.co.uk
T: 01765 600909
*programme subject to change
Etihad Stadium, Manchester
FEATURES
2016 is the year of AI, so what
does this mean for the
legal profession?
Katie Gibbs explains why AI is more than hype, and why the
legal sector needs to prepare to adopt these technologies or
risk being left behind.
s I’m sure you have heard, 2016 has been the year of
Artificial Intelligence. It is currently the hot topic in digital;
it has seen the rise of chatbots in everyday life, as well
as numerous other changes, from contesting parking tickets and
finding new recipes, to the announcement that IBM Watson can
diagnose cancers better than any human doctor can. Some argue
that all this excitement around Artificial Intelligence is just another
hype cycle, but I’m confident that the current surge of interest in
AI is not just hype, and will only increase in 2017. Why? Because we
are seeing AI deliver tangible and reliable benefits to business that
it simply has not done before.
A
Our company, Matter, is a consultancy specialising in designing
new services and products with Artificial Intelligence at their core.
We have seen unprecedented interest and demand in AI services
as businesses realise the value and efficiencies that it can bring.
Businesses are investing more money than ever before in AI
technologies, and this is only going to increase as the technologies
evolve and learn.
How far AI has come
The key reason for this surge in interest is that AI has finally
reached the point where it can be applied to a range of use cases,
and companies are wanting to get ahead of the game so they
can reap the benefits as soon as possible. Whether it’s easing
the burden of governance and compliance obligations using AI
decision support tools modelled on the knowledge of experts,
or developing a chatbot to answer complex customer questions,
Artificial Intelligence can be applied across all industries, and
the legal profession is no exception. The use of AI to determine
whether a case should be taken on or not is now commonplace
in large law firms, and it was recently announced that AI has been
used to predict decisions of the European Court of Human Rights
to 79% accuracy.
I recently went to a talk on the impact that Artificial Intelligence
will have across industries, and the majority of attendees
were surprised at how far AI (and its range of uses) has come;
from beating a human at the ancient game of Go and winning
Jeopardy, to analysing enormous amounts of information in
order to make recommendations, and harnessing sentiment
analysis to understand users’ reactions. Regardless of whether
this technology is being used to demonstrate its ability to win
intellectual games, or to make recommendations to doctors on
how to treat a medical condition, there is a need to regulate this
technology and set the parameters for how we should be working
with Artificial Intelligence. Which is why I see law playing a much
larger part in the development and implementation of Artificial
Intelligence in the next year.
20 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
We risk being in a
position where the law and
those in the legal profession are
left trailing even further behind
technological advances
A key concern regarding the use of technology and law seems to
be the assumption that judges understand the technology and
software that is being used, and is increasingly becoming crucial
to court cases. However, historically, judges have predominantly
relied on the outcomes of external reviews and audits as evidence,
rather than understanding and analysing how technologies
have been developed, and the impact that this can have once
implemented. This highlights a real need for the legal system to
be brought up to date with the use and regulations of technology,
and AI is no exception. How prepared is our legal system for such
advanced technology?
AI and autonomy
When we talk about Artificial Intelligence, the topic of driverless
cars is unavoidable. They’re the most publicised use of AI in the
media and they hold a certain fascination in part because they
are seen as the ultimate test of the limitations of AI. You will
have heard that the AI system in driverless cars is learning how
to make decisions in a split second when the car is placed in a
dangerous situation; will it decide to hit the bus in front or the
elderly woman walking on the pavement? If a child runs into
the road, will it direct the car to swerve into a wall and risk the
lives of the passengers? These are moral dilemmas that any of
us would struggle to answer, yet we’re expecting a machine to
calculate what the best outcome is. Before long, we will have
cases brought against companies developing driverless cars to
assess whether the AI system made the right decision in these
scenarios, or whether the training data used led to a faulty
output. AI is posing problems by introducing concepts that
current law does not cover.
The legal system therefore needs to evolve to cover these
concepts, and we need to have confidence that judges understand
the technologies being used and are ready to tackle such cases
where morality and technology overlap. Google, Facebook and
Amazon recently announced that they have formed a council
to formulate ethical rules to govern how robots and computer
December 2016
FEATURES
A Terminator-esque future is being propounded by the media, and is
creating an atmosphere of fear surrounding AI and the role that it will play
in the future
programs should behave in the future, but why are technology
providers having to step into this role? Surely our legal system
should lead the way in steering how Artificial Intelligence should
be regulated, as establishing clearly defined parameters will enable
companies to be held accountable for how they are developing
and using artificial intelligence systems.
Perceptions of AI
This would prompt a change in the public perception of AI. A
key issue that we encounter when speaking to businesses about
Artificial Intelligence is their perception of it; they are either
extremely cynical or they have extremely high expectations
of what it can do. This is in part due to the media’s overblown
coverage of Artificial Intelligence, whether it’s a TV show where
Artificial Intelligence becomes a sentient being, or the latest story
whereby AI has been proven to be more successful than a human.
A Terminator-esque future is being propounded by the media,
and is creating an atmosphere of fear surrounding AI and the role
that it will play in the future. Establishing regulations for Artificial
Intelligence would help calm this nervousness surrounding it in the
media, as it would send a clear message that controls are in place,
and companies are to be held responsible against them.
been presented to inform human decision making, thus allowing
legal teams to make better decisions, quicker.
Although 2016 has been heralded as the year of Artificial
Intelligence and there are examples of it being used effectively
and ever more increasingly within law firms, the entire industry
needs to evaluate the impact that AI will have on every aspect of
our lives, and set the precedent for how this should be regulated
and monitored. Otherwise, we risk being in a position where
the law and those in the legal profession are left trailing even
further behind technological advances. AI is being implemented
in all industries to better inform human decisions and customer
service, and instead of fearing for what this could mean,
lawyers should embrace the speed and accuracy that Artificial
Intelligence presents. After all, AI cannot develop creative legal
arguments, so expert legal intervention by compassionate
lawyers will still be needed.
Katie Gibbs is a Consultant at Matter, and specialises in running innovation
workshops and projects, with a focus on providing insights into the
application of Artificial Intelligence.
This in turn would provide the industry with the opportunity to
propel the message that AI is a powerful tool that should be used
to help humans make decisions and do their jobs even better, not
to replace them. There is often trepidation when talking about
AI, as people are wary of the impact that it will have on jobs
traditionally performed by humans. AI’s have different strengths
and capabilities to their human supervisors, and it’s the synergy
between human and AI that is so exciting and appealing. We need
to make the most of the opportunity that AI presents us with and
use it to complement and inform our human actions, rather than
empowering AI to take these actions on our behalf.
Practical application
In terms of the practical application of Artificial Intelligence within
the legal profession, it can be used to automate tasks, streamline
processes, facilitate and expedite research, flag up relevant
precedents, or answer complex regulatory questions immediately
and often with greater accuracy. Such tools would help free up
the time that lawyers can spend on more complex, bespoke legal
tasks. For example, Kim, Riverview’s virtual assistant, is designed
to help legal teams make better and quicker decisions, such as
suggesting the best order in which to renegotiate a series of
corporate contracts. The use of AI in such examples complements
human intellect and decision-making, as it streamlines arduous,
time consuming processes by analysing the enormous amount of
data that is available, and ensures that all relevant information has
December 2016
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 21
FEATURES
How AI will deliver
law firms improved
profitability
AI can complete time-consuming tasks, freeing up lawyers to
focus on those tasks that require the human touch. Ben Taylor
discusses how this can be achieved.
recent Financial Times headline declared that ‘legal firms
are unleashing office automatons’. The article by Jane
Croft, published on 16th May 2016, suggests that “artificial
intelligence is relieving junior lawyers of time-consuming tasks.”
In other words, junior lawyers will be freed up to focus on other
legal tasks that require the human touch. The argument is that
by training junior lawyers to develop new skills to perform other
jobs, their law practices could become more efficient and more
profitable. AI therefore offers an opportunity to innovate.
A
In her report, Croft cited Professor Richard Susskind, a technology
adviser to the Lord Chief Justice. He has apparently said, quoting Croft,
that “intelligent search systems could now outperform junior lawyers
and paralegals in reviewing large sets of documents and selecting the
most relevant.” He believes that the legal profession has had 5 years
to re-invent itself from being legal advisers to legal technologists, and
he has criticised law schools for turning out 20th Century lawyers. This
is because there is some reluctance in many law firms to embrace
technology with the same vigor that other sectors have done. However,
by embracing AI they could catch up and gain a competitive edge.
Cognitive reasoning
The key to competitive advantage lies in the use of artificial
intelligence for Cognitive Reasoning. Cognitive Reasoning is a term
that describes technologies that start with a structure of human
knowledge, which can be applied to make rationalised judgments,
at scale, without the human having to be present.
In the case of the legal sector, initial opportunities come from
automated decision-making, and how AI can take human expertise
and apply it to legislation, enabling lawyers to more efficiently
interpret the right advice and decisions for clients.
We are already seeing examples of global law practices developing
their capabilities in this area. Projects are being designed to scale
expertise in a way that wasn’t previously possible, offering better
efficiency and consistency. The traditional methods of performing
these tasks typically require greater levels of human resource and
many ‘man hours’ to deliver the same result.
The technology also gives the ability to use knowledge to deliver
scalable advice, at any time of the day.
Andrew Joint, Partner – Commercial Technology Team, at law
practice Kemp Little, said that these kinds of tools will help with
other aspects. “Currently I would sense that most are looking at
AI in law firms for activities such as M&A due diligence or litigation
disclosure – document heavy reviews, involving gigabytes of
documentation and large amounts of lawyer time on relatively
mundane activities”, he explains, before commenting that the AI
review and analysis exercise replaces what was previously being
done by junior lawyers.
22 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
Trust and adoption will
increase through providing accurate
and reliable recommendations that
are auditable
Matt Peers, Director of ISS at Linklaters, responds: “The AI heading
is quite broad, but what is clear is that AI is going to play an
increasingly important role in how we, and our clients, work. Our
plan is to make sure that we have technology that meets the
needs of the people in Linklaters, as well as those of our clients.
Furthermore, we will look to invest in technology and change our
processes accordingly. The market is crowded and evolving fast, so
we do not intend to be wedded to any one solution.”
Improving workflow
So how can AI improve workflow and efficiency in a law firm?
There are already examples of Cognitive Reasoning helping
firms achieve this. Systems are being built that take the expertise
and approach of individual lawyers, and can analyse if specific
clients will be affected. This is then scaled to apply to all clients,
something that would have taken hundreds of lawyer hours. To
address the complexity of this kind of analysis, a sort of AIpowered triage tool can be used. With its help, law firms can run
all of their clients through the system to establish who is at risk. In
this scenario, AI is doing the groundwork, giving the lawyer a very
good starting point for future client conversations, with high levels
of transparency.
James Loft – CEO of Matter, says that form-filling is another
example of where AI can help law firms to become more efficient.
He nevertheless suggests that the “question is: Are you going to
stop lawyers from using paper?”
He thinks that’s unlikely to happen, but he believes that “it can
help with the building of organisational knowledge, offering a brain
of information that is stored by the law firm (say by digitalising
documents that are in paper form).” Through this process, modern
law firms can add new value to existing information and build on
the knowledge of individuals.
Like Rainbird, AI technology company Matter has found that AI
can also benefit the legal consumer by opening up a new avenue
of advice. “Think about Robo(t) Advice, where there is legal
information on pages that isn’t clear to the consumer. This can be
better understood by the consumer by using natural language,
and so consumers can ask questions or gain legal advice.” This can
reduce costs and be used as a first port of call.
December 2016
FEATURES
Systems are being built that take the expertise and approach of
individual lawyers, and can analyse if specific clients will be affected
He explains that ‘Robo Advice’ is similar to ringing the NHS
Direct helpline. It is not always going to be the last port of call,
because the legal consumer may still need to speak with a
lawyer to clarify the details of their case or situation. However,
more likely, a lawyer’s judgement will be supported by details
that are supplied from an initial assessment that the AI tool has
already made
Joint adds: “AI can potentially allow issues to be dealt with more
accurately. It can make it cheaper because the work can be done
more quickly. Additionally, on a practical basis when I implement
an IT system, it doesn’t come with the same amount of ‘loaded
costs’ compared to when I take on a lawyer as an employee. That
speed and volume of performance benefit, plus other financial
benefits to the law firm, means the legal consumer is likely to get
quicker, and perhaps cheaper, services.”
Overcoming challenges
For AI technology to achieve wide-spread traction in law firms,
there are some challenges that must be overcome. “A key part of
the client/advisor relationship involves trust – typically arising via
face-to-face discussions”, says Joint. Confidence and trust in the
advice is important, because that’s what clients come to law firms
for: spending large amounts of money on issues that may involve
life-altering events.
He explains: “This is the challenge for AI and is the likely real
impact of the use of AI on the legal consumer. It now takes a long
time to realise you are dealing with a chat bot rather than a real
person when you are messaging customer call-centres. Although
we are getting quite comfortable with machines communicating
with us, I’m not sure we’re completely there yet with regards to
taking advice from them regarding key life decisions.”
However, Cognitive Reasoning and technologies that take human
expertise as a starting point, will naturally begin to build trust, as
they can support decision making by providing a justification or
rationale for the answers given.
From a technology perspective, one of the biggest challenges for
a law firm will be a requirement for well-tagged data to ensure
that it is suitable for use in an AI system. If organised data isn’t
available, the quality of the human expertise applied to a system
will be key to its success.
Also, in the case of any of these technologies, consideration would
need to be given to providing the knowledge resource that feeds
into the system.
But the thing to note here is that you can (and should) start small.
With the modern slavery legislation example, human expertise
could be encoded in less than a week with the resulting timesaving being huge. From small tests like this, it is then possible to
scale it out throughout other legislation changes, working towards
building a centre of excellence.
December 2016
Other sectors
Loft says that other sectors are adopting forms of AI that can also
be used by the legal sector. He explains that there are a number
of approaches to AI. “One is cognitive reasoning, which is used in
financial services. Then you have machine learning; law firms have
started to use this type of technology to decide on the viability
of a case, because it can be used to make predictions as it learns,
determine what has happened, and can analyse what should
happen next,” says Loft.
“IBM is using Natural Language Classification for personality
assessments from the way clients speak, all based on
comprehensible human language”, he says, before revealing that
this kind of technology is also used in call centre environments
to give a personalised feel, or to avoid problems on a call. “It
can be used to assess people’s emotional state to avoid any
fallout. Understanding emotional intelligence better can make
it a level playing field by offering a uniformed approach to how
you deal with people, allowing you to structure and support the
conversations”, he says.
Resistance to change
In spite of the benefits associated with the implementation of
artificial intelligence in modern law firms, there remains a reluctance
to adopt technology. Typically, lawyers and law firms are naturally
risk averse. There’s a pressure to develop and demonstrate trust in
everything they do, and the problem is that a technology they can’t
see is often considered a big ‘no’ in terms of trust.
This lack of trust is putting the sector at risk of becoming behind
the times. It is very people-centric, and so firms aren’t naturally
inclined to implement much technology.
Loft concurs by suggesting that “Lawyers have invested many
years to become highly skilled and therefore have a strong belief in
their own abilities.” For AI to gain traction, lawyers need to develop
a belief in the technology, which means it has to demonstrate its
value. Again, trust and adoption will increase through providing
accurate and reliable recommendations that are auditable.
Embrace AI
The current culture maintains lawyers sitting for hours with books
and paper. A lot of this is still necessary, but a reluctant approach
to adopting technologies could hinder the sector’s ability to
deliver opportunities that serve their clients better, increase
efficiencies, or grow profitability for a firm.
Technology is opening up opportunities for the sector that weren’t
previously possible. So many of the barriers to adopting AI will
eventually be overcome, bringing new capabilities to law firms,
and more efficient ways to inform decision-making. Both Lawyers
and clients will likely benefit from this, making more profitable
relationships all round.
Ben Taylor is the CEO and founder of Artificial Intelligence company, Rainbird.
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 23
FEATURES
The Missing Piece of the
Puzzle – The Role of the
Legal Engineer
Catherine Bamford, Founder of BamLegal, describes the
increasingly important role of the legal engineer and explains
that it’s not just about being a techie.
W
hen people ask what I do, I tell them I am a legal engineer.
I am then faced with a puzzled expression or am asked,
“Sorry, a what?”
I believe that with the speed by which new legal technologies are
being developed and brought to market, and given the potentially
huge changes these technologies will bring to the way legal
services are practiced and delivered, the role of a legal engineer
will become increasingly commonplace and vital within law firms.
Jonathan Patterson, Development Director of DWF LLP, describes
the role of the Legal Engineer as “the missing piece of the puzzle”,
and one that those in the market still do not fully understand. They
think it is a purely technical job. So, what is a legal engineer really
and what skills do they need to have? Let me try and explain the
role by telling you a little about how I got to become one.
5 years ago, I was a rather bored and disillusioned lawyer in a large
commercial firm. I was considering leaving law completely but had
no idea what else to do, save for some vague notion of becoming a
scuba diving instructor! So, when the opportunity came along to go
on an internal secondment to help my practice area become more
efficient using automation technology, I grabbed it with both hands.
I had no idea what it would involve, or if I would be any good at
it, but it was a break from fee-earning for 3 months and I thought,
“who knows, I might even enjoy it.” It turned out I loved it.
Entering automation
I was initially asked to automate precedents using Thomson
Reuters’ Contract Express. I was always into maths at school and
was surprised to discover that the simple form of coding the
software required was similar to algebra. It wasn’t long until my
inner geek came fully out of the closet and I would spend day and
night coding up templates to create online questionnaires for the
lawyers to draft their documents.
I really enjoyed working out how best to automate a tricky, multilayered section, how to get the fastest result with the fewest
number of questions and how to use the software for purposes
for which it was not necessarily designed. I could be truly creative
again, which was liberating. I approached the firm and asked if
rather than going back to fee-earning they would let me manage
and roll out automation full time. Luckily, they said yes.
Having been a junior lawyer, I could see what a difference this
software would make to our daily lives, by speeding up all the
boring bits we didn’t go to law school to do! I was able to explain
24 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
Although an interest and
understanding of tech is essential, a
legal engineer is not purely a techy
to those that had not yet used it how it could help them and free
them up to carry out more interesting tasks, the tasks the clients
were actually paying for. This created a healthy pipeline and before
long I had a brilliant team working with me, and we managed to
automate the majority of the firm’s precedents.
As well as the automation, I loved having to think of different ways
to ‘sell’ the ideas to the lawyers. Frequently, they would tell me
how their work was so bespoke it couldn’t be automated. This was
when I had to be respectful, tactful, persuasive and creative to
show how in fact certain tasks could be turned around faster, more
accurately and consistently. I think this aspect, the ability to sell
new ideas with enthusiasm to generally sceptical and risk-averse
people, is as important to the role of a legal engineer as the ability
to understand technology.
Soon, our team began working on integrating the software
with other available technologies, and we became part of wider
knowledge management initiatives. I was very lucky to work for
such an innovative firm open to ideas and change.
The Legal Engineer
However, we struggled to come up with a job title that accurately
described what our team was doing. We were not technical
enough to be called true programmers, yet we were no longer
simply automating documents. More and more we were listening
to the lawyers, designing solutions and selling the new ideas. It
was one of my gurus, Orlando Conetta, who first suggested that
we were in fact “Legal Knowledge Engineers”.
When I left the firm to set up BamLegal, a company that helps law
firms and in-house legal departments to improve the way they
deliver legal services using technology, I dropped the ‘knowledge’
part, as it was not just legal content we were helping with but in
fact the whole delivery of the service. Our team of legal engineers
is now growing by the day.
The term ‘Legal Knowledge Engineer’ was first coined by Richard
Susskind in ‘The End of Lawyers’, 2008. He predicted that roles
December 2016
FEATURES
Having been a junior lawyer I could see what a difference this
software would make to our daily lives, by speeding up all the boring bits
we didn’t go to law school to do
would exist and indeed become prevalent in law firms of the
future, as firms would require people who could combine legal
knowledge with technical expertise.
Several other firms now have legal engineering roles, or roles
akin to them, just with different names. In August, Stuart Barr of
HighQ wrote a fantastic article entitled “The Rise of the Legal
Engineer”, and defined a Legal Engineer as “the interface between
legal experts and technology experts – they get both sides of the
equation”. I agree with this definition. However, I think the role is
much, much more.
Introducing and understanding
Dealing with lawyers is tricky. They do not like business speak
or IT language. I have seen legal process mappers lose a room
of lawyers instantly, upon uttering phrases like ‘work packages’.
Project managers are taught that communication is key, but trying
to get 6 partners on a weekly conference call to run through a
project plan is not the way to get them onboard, and when folk
from the IT department start speaking about SQL or APIs to a
bunch of lawyers, the two sets look at each other like they are
from different planets. Now that firms are being asked to embrace
AI engines, the gap could get even wider.
A legal engineer must use their legal background and
understanding of the pressures lawyers are under to make the
process of re-engineering and improving the way they carry out
legal matters using these new technologies as pain free as possible
for them. They need to capture the lawyers’ requirements and then
translate these to the programmers or software providers in a way
that will not require lots of clarification and hundreds of rounds of
correcting between both parties.
essential for the role. I believe it is. To successfully re-engineer a
legal process or service, to truly understand the problem, to be
able to identify the key variables, to see how it could be done
better without over complicating things, and to then get the
lawyers to use it, it really helps if you have been in their shoes and
can speak their language.
When I asked Jonathan Patterson what he thought a Legal
Engineer was, he described “an individual with a hybrid skill set
that can translate legal knowledge, processes and technology
into commercial solutions”. He went on to say that he still thinks
people don’t quite get it though, that it also involves what he calls
“lawyer whispering”, which is having empathy and being able to
get engagement as well as being a designer and developer of legal
solutions. Drew Winlaw of exciting new law firm Wavelength.law
suggests bravery, imagination and pragmatism are also some of
the key traits.
Therefore, although an interest and understanding of tech is
essential, a legal engineer is not purely a techy. Look for those
with a legal background and a flair for selling; creative people who
can consult, problem solve, project manage and facilitate. A legal
engineer may well be your firm’s missing piece to the puzzle.
Catherine Bamford is the Founder of BAM Legal.
The growing use of AI in law to speed up due diligence and contract
risk evaluations is a perfect example. Regularly, I attend demos
by the Legal AI software companies with a client. The software
company show what their incredible technology is capable of, but
once they have left the room the client turns to me bamboozled
and asks, “OK, so we know it’s good, but how do we use it? Where
would we start? It sounds like a lot of work to get set up. The
lawyers don’t have time!” This is where the legal engineer comes in.
Connecting the dots, explaining the use cases, spending the time
translating and developing the solution with the software company,
putting in the hours that the lawyers do not have to identify the
variables to be extracted, explaining why and when.
More than a techie
There is some argument as to whether a legal background is
December 2016
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 25
FEATURES
Improving the craft of
conveyancing
Hugo-Pickford Wardle discusses why he feels the conveyancing
process is ripe for automation and how doing so could improve
the system for conveyancers and their clients, and have
implications for the entire law profession.
Y
ou already use Artificial intelligence every day, whether
you are using Google maps, driving your new car or
trading stocks.
What’s changed very recently is that Artificial Intelligence
technology has become commercially viable to use in any business
context you can imagine, and a lot of people are waking up to
legal being a prime use for this technology.
I saw first-hand how broken
the conveyancing process is in the
UK. This, I decided, is the perfect
place to apply this new technology
Back in 2008 I worked with Practical Law to put the UK legislation
onto an iPad. We saw reluctance to make this change, even when
the benefit was clear.
Let’s start with big data.
Now, the innovation of AI is redefining the role of a lawyer, even
replacing lawyers. Given my previous experience of the legal
profession’s lack of acceptance of a solution that would make their
life easier, I struggle to see wholesale adoption of a technology
that will require them to rethink their business from the ground up.
The application of technology in the legal space is currently so
underdeveloped, just starting with the ability for tech to crunch
large volumes of data to take the dull grunt work away from
junior lawyers is where AI has started to gain traction in the
legal space. Organisations such as ROSS and RAVN are helping
commercial firms build these types of tools, saving time and
money for their clients.
As an entrepreneur, that excites me. We see that AI can be used
to create an experience that fundamentally changes the way
customers interact with legal services, and we’re betting that
traditional legal organisations will have their Uber moment sooner,
rather than later, if they wake up to this.
However, consolidating an industry into one enormous corporation
in the way Uber has done is not the path to a better world, or
even a better customer experience. At FastMove we are working
on an AI solution that will let conveyancers focus on the craft of
conveyancing, rather than administration, that will ultimately enable
them to manage more cases with the same number of employees.
By taking this approach of replacing the unappealing aspects of
conveyancing work with AI and augmenting the fulfilling work
with fantastic 21st century tools, we think that we can change the
conveyancing industry.
We’re starting to trial this approach in spring 2017 and so if you’d
be interested in getting involved in the future of conveyancing,
please get in touch.
The lawyer’s view
AI and the law. It’s not all about robot lawyers (but watch this space).
Apparently, all lawyers will soon be out of work, replaced by
an army of metropolis style robots, marching onwards and
overthrowing their human counterparts. Well, probably not,
but there are numerous areas where tech can help deliver legal
services, and lawyers are well advised to embrace these to ensure
that the services they provide to their clients is modern, efficient
and provides value.
26 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
The applications to retail legal services, traditional ‘high street’
work, have, however, been stubbornly underdeveloped, despite
numerous obvious applications. For instance, imagine that when
a divorce client wants to know, based on their circumstances and
assets, what they’ll walk away with, and whether they will keep
their house. Rather than lawyers just relying on experience to
provide an answer, they can harness the power and accuracy of
a system that has pulled data from all of the divorce settlements
over the last 20 years (that’s approximately 2 million by the way)
in order to advise their client. These systems are already being
looked at in other jurisdictions, and it is naive to think that it won’t
form part of how law is delivered and consumed in the UK.
So what about predictive law? What if you knew your client’s
problems before they did?
Aside from the obvious benefits of this as a client capture tool,
imagine the enhanced level of customer service this could deliver.
The emerging discipline of predictive law is already working on
this. Conveyancing is the obvious target area and we have already
scoped out and built tools that will crunch data looking at life
events and move triggers to accurately predict when different
demographics will be moving up the property chain.
Lawyers invented blockchain
Blockchain is the new buzzword and it has just started to hit law. Very
broadly speaking it can be described as a big audit trail in the sky.
But wasn’t this concept invented by lawyers hundreds of years
ago? Pre-land registration, epitomes of title sought to provide
exactly such an audit trail to prove ownership and good and
December 2016
FEATURES
These systems are already being looked at in other jurisdictions,
and it is naive to think that it won’t form part of how law is delivered and
consumed in the UK
marketable title, free from encumbrances. Blockchain will rely on
the same basic principles, and unsurprisingly it is already being
explored. Blockchain supported systems are already being built in
Sweden to underpin their conveyancing systems.
The next step for blockchain is to overlay smart contracts:
contracts automatically completed based upon a series of
parameters being reached. Can we expect the system of release
and exchange of contracts to disappear over the coming years,
replaced by smart contracts? Very possibly.
Beware the robot lawyers?
Can we expect to be ousted from our desks by AI? Ultimately the
cognitive power of AI will not only be able to data crunch and
facilitate client self-service, but it will also be able to interpret that
information, take decisions and advise clients of appropriate next
steps and outcomes.
We are currently developing ‘Buddy’, our AI conveyancer, who
will not only facilitate home movers managing the entire process
via their smart phones, but will also assimilate contract packs and
recognise which enquiries need to be raised and answered based
on the contents of those documents. Buddy will also provide home
movers with access to services and tools beyond legal services.
The emergence of blockchain and smart contracts means that
ultimately we expect Buddy to be able to manage the entire endto-end process. The tech will be ready, the question is: will the
profession be ready?
As Professor Susskind says, the future is here, it’s just not evenly
distributed yet. The only question for lawyers is: when are you you
going to get on board?
The innovator’s view
AI Is already here.
Artificial Intelligence is not something new.
The biggest change is the cost of fast computing power has
massively decreased, driven by companies such as AWS. This has
resulted in cloud computing infrastructure that can support the
sort of calculations that are needed for AI to work.
something seemingly impossible even a year earlier. Even with the
massive benefit of not needing to carry a ton of books around, we
still encountered a lot of reluctance to making this change.
Now, the question is not ‘if’ there is an opportunity to revolutionise
the legal industry, but ‘who’ is going to take it? My bet is that
lawyers will need help seizing the opportunity in front of them.
Applications in conveyancing
As artificial intelligence became the hot topic, I sold my house and
bought another. I saw first-hand how broken the conveyancing
process is in the UK. This, I decided, is the perfect place to apply
this new technology.
The first thing I do when looking at an idea in a new industry
is to do the research. I talk to the experts and read magazines
and laws, and for the conveyancing industry this includes the
very exciting Mortgage Lenders Handbook. As I dug into the
conveyancing process in more detail, I was told over and over
again how complicated it was. That there is no perfect path
through a conveyancing process, that there’s always an edge-case.
That it always depends on the slowest party in the chain, and
most interestingly that several conveyancing firms have already
automated the whole process.
As an Innovation consultant, this is the same feedback I have
always had when suggesting change. That whichever industry I’m
looking into is different.
Of course, I don’t want to become a conveyancer. And neither do
I want to become a service provider to make the conveyancing
process 5% better. So, instead I’ll offer an alternative approach.
I have an offer for conveyancers. I’ll cut your case work in half,
so you can do twice as many cases with the same resources.
I’ll deliver to you all the documents you need from the client,
including questions answered by the client that we predict as
being relevant to the conveyancing.
You will then be able to focus on the craft of the conveyancing,
rather than the administration. Promise to make customers home
moves stress free, and I’ll do this for you.
Will lawyers be able to seize the opportunity?
Join us. If you’re a forward-thinking conveyancer we’d love you to
join our trial in 2017, so please get in touch.
People are waking up to legal being the prime use for this new
wave of technological implementation.
Hugo Pickford-Wardle is the Founder of FastMove, applying AI
to conveyancing.
When I worked with Practical Law to put the UK legislation onto an
iPad in 2008, this was highly innovative, using new technology to do
December 2016
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 27
FEATURES
I wouldn’t start
from here…
Building a sustainable AI solution from the inside out
I
“
wouldn’t start from here …”
We’re often struck, inevitably unfairly on occasions, by a similar
thought when we either read about the current and potential
use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the legal market or discuss
developments with potential customers or solutions providers.
We are believers
Putting to one side the challenge that AI means many different
things to many different people, I should state right up front that
we are believers. We have absolutely no doubt that AI and related
technology trends will have a significant impact on all markets and
value chains. The legal market, globally, is not immune from this.
As a result, the Riverview Law Board has placed its bets and
organised Riverview Law accordingly. We have invested millions of
pounds in Kim, our New Jersey-based knowledge automation and
workflow platform.
Kim is a virtual assistant to knowledge workers in all sectors.
Through its no-code configuration model, Kim enables knowledge
workers, including lawyers, to take control of their critical business
processes and work to make better and quicker decisions. Kim
does this by utilising its patent pending artificial intelligence,
assimilation and, critically, data management capabilities. We
believe that the direction of travel is clear, even if timing is
unpredictable, and have acted accordingly.
It is from this position of belief that we have what is hopefully a
helpful reflection. From much of the activity that we see in the
legal market we suspect that, with exceptions, many organisations
are starting their AI journey from the wrong place. We sense
that much energy, money and time is being (and will be) wasted
chasing fashion-driven AI solutions, rather than proper investment,
problem solving and experimentation. Indeed, much of the effort
we see in this area can be put in the ‘being seen to be doing
something’ box. At the end of such a process, the inevitable
happens. Expectations are disappointed. The technology is
blamed. Future investments are delayed or shelved.
This chain of events is potentially life-threatening to organisations.
Failure to understand and ride the current data, IT and AI wave,
over time, risks all. It is a bet the firm issue, particularly if the
wrong or no bets are placed!
28 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
The irony in legal is that
the risks can be reduced and the
opportunities of success increased by
learning from other industries, and
in particular from house builders
Given the technological and data revolution we are living
through, inaction is highly dangerous. But the irony in legal is
that the risks can be reduced and the opportunities of success
increased by learning from other industries, and in particular
from house builders.
We can learn a lot from house builders
Typically, you would not build a house from the roof down. But
that is what we see happening (with exceptions, e.g. Allen &
Overy, Vodafone, Securitas and Barclays) in many law firms and
organisations. There is a temptation to seek instant solutions.
Under pressure to respond to noise and market trends, companies
appear to be trying to put the AI roof on the house without
building or re-constructing the foundations, walls and floors first.
By the way, we recognise this process because this is exactly what
we tried to do when we started our AI journey in 2013, and we
learnt many interesting lessons, which is why the house building
analogy resonates so strongly with us now.
If you have ever watched a house being built from scratch, two
things will probably have struck you. Firstly, a long time seems to
pass with very little progress being made even though there is a
full building crew on-site. Then, suddenly, when the foundations
are finished, the house takes shape remarkably quickly. One
morning the site was just concrete foundations and ground works,
and the next day the house starts to emerge, proudly, from its
rock-solid foundations. It is almost as if it is saying, “I was always
here but you couldn’t see me”.
Secondly, in those weeks when you saw little progress being
made, you were also surprised by how small the building footprint
was. Clearly, a relatively small house is being built on the plot. But,
when the house starts going up, you are amazed by how big it
actually is given how small the foundations and footprint looked.
December 2016
FEATURES
Through its no-code configuration model, Kim enables knowledge
workers, including lawyers, to take control of their critical business
processes and work to make better and quicker decisions
This is where the fundamental role played by the foundations
comes into play. In the house that has been built, there are many
different rooms; lounge, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms and
bathroom, etc. The four bedrooms are all different, in shape,
decoration and furniture. But, critically, all the rooms, with their
different functions and designs, are built on the same foundations.
UK are subject to the same laws and regulations, but even with
this common environment each bank has a different language
(dictionary), risk appetite, business model, data layer, etc., and
context is organisationally specific. This is where Kim comes into
its own.
Enabling a sustainable legal AI solution
Building this ‘Foundational Data and Context Layer’ is not easy.
The foundations represent the very hard but invaluable yards that
need to be navigated.
Think of this analogy in the context of building a sustainable
legal (or indeed any) AI solution. Before building the AI roof it is
important to put solid and durable foundations in place; (i) the
data-layer, (ii) workflow and process automation and (iii) reporting
and dashboards. Combined, we call this the Foundational Data
and Context Layer. Using the instruction and triage process as an
example, the legal data layer will include data points that show:
• Who the instruction came from;
• What business unit they are in;
• What the work type is;
• What the urgency of the work is;
• Whether the instruction is complete;
• When we received the instruction;
• Who we allocated it to;
• What its current status is;
• How long each stage of the work took … etc.
This is the foundational data layer upon which the workflow
process and the real time and trend data is built.
Continuing the analogy, with these triage foundations in place,
which are relevant to all legal work types, it is relatively easy to
build the equivalent of the walls, floors and rooms in a house.
Rather than the lounge, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms and
bathrooms we have contract management, litigation, employment,
property, IP; different work types built on the same foundational
data layer with their own context (their subject matter data layer)
on top.
The hard yards
Like that new house build, we have spent a long time creating our
foundations. We now have the Riverview Law ‘Foundational Data
and Context Layer’ built in Kim. It enables us to execute at a pace
that we never thought possible. A bit like those comedians who
appear on television and become overnight successes after they
have spent ten years learning their trade on the club circuit, we
have now done our club tour and can go global with Kim.
We have made many mistakes along the way, particularly in our
early 2013 ‘fashion’ phase, but the last year has vindicated all the
emotional energy, money and time invested.
Place your bets
One of my friends, who is a technology expert, recently said
to me – “There is no AI magic wand… yet.” The emphasis on
‘yet’ is important. The direction of travel is clear. Create your
‘Foundational Data and Context Layer’ and place your bets.
Karl Chapman is Chief Executive of Riverview Law and Chairman of Kim.
With the foundations, walls, floors and rooms built, it is now easier
to both enable existing third party AI solutions and build tailored
AI solutions using tools like Kim. To build context from the inside
out, not the outside in. To create context from the foundational
layer up rather than by trying to ingest a huge corpus and then
infer context. The latter approach works well with a global corpus
such as diseases. It struggles when context differs by jurisdiction,
geography, work type and organisation. For example, banks in the
December 2016
Artificial Intelligence Supplement 29
CASE STUDY
Case Study:
Business to Consumer, AI to Human
M
atter developed two proof of concepts for a client earlier
this year, to demonstrate how AI solutions can add value
to their customer support systems.
The first POC was a Chatbot to demonstrate that an AI system
can interact with users to generate accurate responses to their
questions, and direct them to the correct place for expedient
support if not.
The development of Natural Language Processing (NLP)
applications is challenging, because computers traditionally
require humans to “speak” to them in a programming language
that is precise. However, human speech is ambiguous and the
linguistic structure depends on many complex variables including
slang, regional dialects and social context. Our POC needed to
have this range of understanding around how people speak, but
also needed to be capable of evolving as language does, in order
to continue to have value.
To start the Chatbot’s learning process, training data was required
in the form of actual customer questions and the answers
provided by the human advisors. As customers often ask the same
question in different ways, we needed to provide the Chatbot
with a number of variants so it could compare, associate and
correlate these different versions of the same question. The bot
also examined patterns in data to improve understanding of the
questions and their associated answers.
The degree of accuracy quickly improved the more times it was
trialed, along with validation feedback regarding the helpfulness
of the answer. This training continued until the system was ready
for more information to further improve and correct any inaccurate
learning; consuming a new set of training data from real life
webchat scenarios, so it could continue to grow its knowledge and
reply with ever-increasing degrees of accuracy.
By undertaking this cycle of events, the Chatbot demonstrated
how it improves and increases its knowledge so as to deliver
appropriate answers. The advantage of NLP is that it can be
trained from limited real life data to be able to speak the language
of customers, and convert this to meet the language of your
systems and processes.
The second POC was a Procedures and Instruction Search to
demonstrate the power of AI in the co-ordination and retrieval of
information from internal systems, so that team members are able
to better answer queries and, as a result, better serve customers.
With vast amounts of information being deemed valuable to
support employees and customers, grouped with the necessity
of providing a correct answer, it is no longer practical to serve
information up through traditional search methods with any
degree of efficiency or success.
Traditional search relies on matching search results to the specific
keywords entered, whereas the Matter search solution was able
to learn a huge amount of information by ingesting text from a
number of sources, pulling out keywords, identifying entities and
understanding taxonomies. The system also assessed sentiment
in the text and gave each entity a score for its relevance based
on a number of factors. These factors included references across
documents and the topic it was searching. Relevance played
a large part in the work carried out, as we were looking at a
combination of topics or types of information. Therefore, the
relevance and ranking added a further level of intelligence where
the system could not only identify information and understand it,
but also provide relevance to both the topic it covers and other
related topics.
The main advantage of introducing an AI bot is that it very quickly
becomes a subject matter expert in the topics it has been trained
on. Unlike humans, it retains and remembers everything it has
learnt or accessed through training data. In complex sets of data
such as this, an AI enhanced system means that all information is
available and relevant, rather than recent and available, in a timely
manner to best serve the user.
Matter is an independent consultancy without allegiance to
any product vendor, ensuring the best fit for purpose should a
particular product provide value to a client’s solution needs.
We are focused on delivering outstanding customer experiences
and building solutions in line with their experiential elements to
make them both usable and engaging. An AI system is working
well when it is invisible to the user, and therefore requires a great
experience to support success.
For this client’s POCs we used:
The main advantage of
introducing an AI bot is that it
very quickly becomes a subject
matter expert in the topics it has
been trained on
30 Artificial Intelligence Supplement
• IBM Watson Dialog
• IBM Watson Natural Language Classifier
• Rainbird AI
• IBM Watson Retrieve & Rank
• Alchemy API
Russell Goldie is the Director of Client Engagement at Matter and is
passionate about improving his clients’ efficiencies. For further information
phone 020 8242 4300, or visit experiencematter.co.uk
December 2016
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