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Sensei Article Featured in The Computer & Internet Lawyer

October 25, 2018

Sensei’s article “Running with the Machines: Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law” by Sharon Nelson and John Simek was featured in the October 2018 issue of The Computer & Internet Lawyer journal. The Computer and Internet Lawyer journal is a publication of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. Wolters Kluwer Law & Business delivers expert content and solutions in the areas of law, corporate compliance, health compliance, reimbursement, and legal education.

Excerpt: Back in 2015, we wrote an article entitled “How Will Watson’s Children Impact the Future of Law Practice?” What a lot has happened in two years! The children of Watson and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies continue to spawn at an ever-accelerating rate.

Only recently has genuine real-world usage of AI in law firms begun to flourish. Amid the initial hype, about 5% of what was ballyhooed as AI, in our judgment, was not. Even today, there is an astonishing amount of hype – everyone wants to say they’ve boarded the AI train. As we write, an article from InfoWorld was just published entitled, “Artificially Inflated: It’s Time to call BS on AI.” While great ‘clickbait’, we think the title overstates the case. The peaks and troughs of AI are well documented, and as we are now at a peak, the hype factor gets greater, while the reality (often very good) is lost in the noise of the hype.

As large firms, which certainly need to be at the forefront of innovation, begin to invest considerable sums in AI, the landscape is changing. Large law firms simply cannot afford – for monetary and brand reasons – to be left behind. Clients will begin to see the efficiencies of AI and its extraordinary possibilities wherever AI may be found. AI will be a honeypot to clients seeking those efficiencies and possibilities.

A brief note: An article of this length cannot adequately address all the players in the legal AI market and what they can do. We call out a few names simply because we’ve run into these companies through colleagues or our reading.