Ride the Lightning

Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

First BigLaw Firm Will Use Artificial Intelligence in Bankruptcy Practice

May 12, 2016

This looks like a moment we will all look back upon as the beginning of a major shift in law practice. We do live in interesting times – in the Chinese sense of the proverb.

ROSS intelligence, based on IBM's Watson platform, announced on May 5th that BakerHostetler has agreed to license ROSS Intelligence's artificial intelligence legal research product, ROSS. BakerHostetler will license ROSS for use in its Bankruptcy, Restructuring and Creditors' Rights team.

With the support of Watson's cognitive computing and natural language processing capabilities, lawyers ask ROSS their research question in natural language, as they would a person, then ROSS reads through the law, gathers evidence, draws inferences and returns highly relevant, evidence-based candidate answers. ROSS also monitors the law around the clock to notify users of new court decisions that can affect a case. The program continually learns from the lawyers who use it to bring back better results each time.

"At BakerHostetler, we believe that emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help enhance the services we deliver to our clients," said Bob Craig, Chief Information Officer. "We are proud to team up with innovators like ROSS and we will continue to explore these cutting-edge technologies as they develop."

"BakerHostetler's commitment to the future of the legal practice and ensuring they continue to deliver the highest level of value to their clients completely aligns with our vision at ROSS Intelligence," said Andrew Arruda, CEO/Cofounder. "BakerHostetler has been using ROSS since the first days of its deployment and we are proud to partner with a true leader in the industry as we continue to develop additional AI legal assistants."

And so, what Richard Susskind predicted (technological unemployment) may finally be in its nascent stages in BigLaw. My prediction? ROSS will begin as a lawyer's assistant and graduate as an associate.

E-mail: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Information Security/Information Technology
http://www.senseient.com
http://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson