Ride the Lightning

Will Computers Replace Lawyers in the Courtroom?

May 6, 2015

I am a big fan of Doug Austin's posts in the eDiscoverydaily and he certainly struck a nerve recently when he wrote a post about lawyers being replaced by computers in the courtroom. And since I am on my way to a Virginia State Bar Future of Law Committee meeting, this seemed like good fodder for the Committee.

He cites a Wall Street Journal article, "What Big Data Means for the Legal System" written by Robert Plant (not the Led Zeppelin singer, as Doug points out but a professor at the University of Miami, as well as an author and blogger for Harvard Business Review & WSJ Leadership Expert). As Plant notes, the rise of big data “allows lawyers to look for patterns and correlations across vast data sets previously inaccessible.”

Plant uses analysis of judges’ behavior in cases as an example (and this is one small slice of what the machines can do), suggesting the ability to obtain answers to questions like: “Does the judge dismiss cases for a consistent pattern of reasoning? How do holidays affect decisions? Do they sentence harder at different times of the day?” The list could go on and on.

Because of big data analytics, Plant predicts that “[m]any of the routine tasks now performed by entry-level lawyers or paralegals will increasingly be undertaken by analytics; case and trial strategies will be developed by legal informatics as will increasingly jury-selection strategies.”

His ultimate conclusion is of course highly controversial – at least to lawyers.

“It is clear that with advances in machine learning, computers will eventually pass the legal bar exam and defendants will be given the right to be represented by a computational attorney if they so wish and thus court rooms could see a truly new form of human computer interaction in which the computer answers the question ‘does the client have a case?’"

Actually, I agree with the conclusion though the timing is a bit uncertain – I am quite sure I will be retired before the machines become lawyers. For my younger colleagues, I'd keep an eye on the horizon. Rather than focus your attention on zombies (when did they become THIS popular?), I'd watch the robots with advanced artificial intelligence. They are likely to be a much greater threat.

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