In my previous post, I posited that understanding the different types of artificial intelligence helps us avoid the fear-inspiring discourse about the future of AI in the legal profession and instead lets us focus on the potential for AI tools to help attorneys serve their clients more efficiently and effectively.
The key takeaway here is the distinction between “weak” AI and the far more sophisticated “artificial superintelligence.” As attorneys, we deeply analyze complex subjective issues, we make strategic decisions, and we hone our power of persuasion. Teaching a machine any one of these skills will be a huge challenge; teaching a single machine to engage all of these skills simultaneously is immeasurably more difficult. This is why I don’t believe we’ll see machines replacing lawyers any time in the near, or even distant, future.
This doesn’t mean that today’s “weak AI” isn’t extremely powerful. Even though current AI technologies cannot exercise a litigator’s strategic judgment, they’ve already driven game-changing innovations in the legal market. Like self-driving cars, AI-backed legal technology has the power to automate certain key tasks which we previously thought had to be done by humans, giving attorneys more time to focus on the tasks that do require complex analysis and creative thinking — which are also the tasks that can be dependably billed to clients.
Take Casetext’s own CARA, AI-backed legal search technology that can analyze a document (like an opponent’s brief) and identify the cases and previously filed legal briefs most relevant to it. By saving lawyers time on the more mechanical tasks of legal practice, leveraging this type of AI can ultimately lead to more satisfied clients, less time spent on non-billable work, and, very often, more business.
Legal practice often boils down to pattern recognition, and even “weak” AI can uncover patterns that humans aren’t capable of recognizing. CARA’s pattern recognition is like putting the law to work for you. For instance, historical resources relied on massive human effort to summarize cases for litigators. It turns out, though, that when judges summarize holdings from other cases in their opinions, they often repeat similar language. Casetext uses those patterns to uncover judge-written summaries of judicial opinions, which most attorneys trust more than any other source, leading to an overall more reliable source of legal information.
Legal professionals can look forward to even wider-reaching innovations based on AI systems’ capacity for machine learning and natural language processing that will help attorneys do their best work. The truth is, though, that even though AI can uncover insights about legal writing, there are decades of work to be done before AI can craft arguments at the depth of a human — especially a highly skilled, highly trained, highly experienced attorney. It’s going to be a while before robots are arguing cases at the Supreme Court, but until then AI can be the modern lawyer’s secret weapon.
Jake Heller is the founder and CEO of Casetext.
