Law and Artificial Intelligence:Examining its application in Legal parlance

The world is recently witnessing  a rapid development in technology and computer automation, this development comes with great influence on every spare of humanity and it’s application has invariably gained a prolific pride of place in every aspect in human life and their commonly activities. Law as one of the key spare of human existence cannot excape being infected by the development of the day and the law being the driving range that rule the society and the humanity when they changed the law will be forced to change so to conform with the order of the day.

Our law is dynamic as the same as our society which is the receipient of the law and the later  brings effective change to the former and vice versa. The technology growth our society is embracing have forced the law and the legal profession to equally embrace the use of the technology of the day to meet the today’s clients and litigants demands. It will not be a fault saying to say that; the expectations of the client of 21st century both from the law and Lawyers and even from the court is greater than what the client of the then centuries expected. This fact necessitate the use of Artificial Intelligence machines in the legal palace.

The present article introduces artificial intelligence, it’s birth in the legal palace and among other related things assess the areas of application of the artificial intelligence in law and legal practice  of the day. The scope of the task is very cyclopean that could require one to top up over the hill but in order to avoid longueur we will briefly touch the gamut of the subject at hand and rest for the day.

we cannot simply address the use and application of Artificial Intelligence (as AI after now) without establishing what the Term AI connotes how has it come into the law.

The Term AI is widely credited to late Prof. Thorne McCarthy which was an attempt to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary AI means; – An area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence;

-The power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior. Thus, AI can be defined simply; as machines that are capable of performing tasks  that, if  performed  by  a  human, would be said  to require intelligence.

The  late  AI  pioneer  McCarthy, stated  that there  is  no  “solid  definition  of  intelligence  that  doesn’t  depend  on  relating  it  to  human  intelligence”  because  “we  cannot  yet  characterize  in general  what  kinds  of  computational  procedures  we  want  to  call  intelligent.” From the foregoing AI attributed to, machine-learning, computerisation, intelligence and automation.

The first intervention of AI into the palace of law can be said Immemorial, it may probably started from the used of clock to address time in courts, law offices and any other legal issue believing that it was accurate and reliable and even more that the human’s assumption of time. ranges through the development of the day to the use of Excel and Microsoft up to the today’s automation (robotic).

E.A Engle in his work An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and LegalReasoning: believes that   “Computer applications for legal  problem-solving have progressed from mere text editors  to case law research  to automated form generation. Today we see computers used as intelligent agents tasked  with  solving specific legal problems, predicting the outcome of a case using precedents and Lawyers points of argument on the issue at hand”

Since the intervention of AI into legal practice has reached the point where Prof. Ajayi  SAN In his very interesting work titled Conflation of  Time:  Analogue Practice  &  Digital  Reality’ has to observed that:

 “Ensuring equitable administration of justice through more innovative means and practices  becomes a necessity rather than a want”.

One key function that Lawyers, solicitors and attorneys have traditionally done for clients  is  to  weigh the strength  of  client arguments and the legal position  of a client in a lawsuit and the court also only used the then traditional way to admit evidence and in the course of interpretation or analysing the fact of the case. The intervention of AI into law has invariably adultered our law and  and it’s Practice.

Increasingly,  lawyers, solicitors, attorneys  and  others  interested  in  the outcome  of  legal  cases  are  using  machine-learning  systems  to make research, predictions  about  the  outcome  of  cases  and  relying  upon  data,  rather than instinct to help assess  their odds of winning a case

The E.A Engle observes too that computer programs  can indeed  solve  legal problems. The fact that computer programs can model law is not necessarily simply of academic interest.  Automated case research is one  potential application  of  intelligent  programs.  When artificial  intelligence determines a solution to a legal problem,  it could then automatically fetch relevant cases from online or offline statutory and case law databases. Some of AI instruments will be briefly examined in order to see their application and usage to our todays Law and Legal practice.

Ravel Law, is said to be able to identify outcomes based on relevant case law, judge rulings and referenced language from more than 400 courts. The product’s Judge Dashboard feature contains cases, citations, circuits and decisions of a specific judge that is said to aid lawyers in understanding how judge is likely to rule on a case. The firm’s CEO, Daniel Lewis,  explained that the Ravel Law can aid in litigation strategy by providing information on how judges make decisions.

eBrevia claims to use natural language processing and machine learning to extract relevant textual data from legal contracts and other documents to guide lawyers in analysis, due diligence and lease abstraction. eBrevia claims that it can analyze more than 50 documents in less than a minute, 10 percent more accurate than a manual review process.

Casetext’s CARA claims to allow lawyers to forecast an opposing counsel’s arguments by finding opinions that were previously used by lawyers. Users can also detect cases that have been negatively treated and flagged as something that lawyers may deem unreliable. It has remarkable features like Motion Library, Argument list, Legal Standards, Parallel Search (which analyses sentences used in a law briefs) etc.

On the other hand, Legal Robot, a San Francisco-based AI company, currently offers Contract Analytics, its answer to the growing contract review software market. Currently in beta, the company states that its software is capable of changing legal content into numeric form and raising issues on the document through machine learning and AI.

Legalsifter helps organizations and law firms negotiate and organize contracts

using A.I. and expertise. It uploads the contract you are reviewing in pdf, doc or docx format and select the document type your negotiating perspective. It tells what important business and legal concepts are missing and present in contract.

Kira Systems asserts that its software is capable of performing a more accurate due diligence contract review by searching, highlighting, and extracting relevant content for analysis. Other team members who need to perform multiple reviews of the content can search for the extracted information with links to the original source using the software. The company claims that its system can complete the task up to 40 percent faster when using it for the first time, and up to 90 percent for those with more experience.

LEVERTON, an offshoot of the German Institute for Artificial Intelligence, also uses AI to extract relevant data, manage documents and compile leases in real estate transactions. The cloud-based tool is said to be capable of reading contracts at high speeds in 20 languages.

LawGeex claims that its software validates contracts if they are within predefined policies. If they fail to meet the standards, then the AI provides suggestions for editing and approval. It does this by combining machine learning, text analytics, statistical benchmarks and legal knowledge by lawyers according to the company. The company also claims that with their tool, law firms can cut costs by 90 percent and reduce contract review and approval time by 80 percent (though these numbers don’t seem to be coupled with any case studies). The firm lists Deloitte and Sears among some of its current customers.

Every lawsuit and court case requires diligent legal research. However, the amount of links to open, cases to read and information to note, can overwhelm lawyers who have limited time doing research. Lawyers can take advantage of the natural language search capability of the ROSS Intelligence software by asking questions, and receiving information such as recommended readings, related case law and secondary resources. It claims that lawyers can ask ROSS questions in plain English such as “what is the Administration of Criminal Justice Act?” and the software will respond with references and citations. Like most machine learning systems, ROSS purportedly improves with use.

These are mare a little drop from an ocean of AI’s impact and influence to the legal Profession and legal practice, Readers with an interest in AI can use the provided links to access more information about the above discussed devices. It may be seen as an optional for law firms especially in Nigeria to adopt AI considering the level of our technology, available power energy and the availability of lawyers to work in the law firms. But the  law firms that adopt AI will be more able to move faster and more likely to meet the expectations and demands of their clients and firms with no ability to automate may find themselves relatively overpriced for legal services that other firms have largely automated away.

As the AI companies continue to find ways of developing technology that will be very helpful to lawyers in preparation of a case and their law firms and even the judges in preparing judgements and rulings, our legal system should be very supportive to the realisation of this benefits. As it will help in speed dispensation of justice and quick dispute resolution which our advocates of justice are carping for.

Although, it cannot be said that the use of AI technology is a safe heaven, free of all vices and unfortunate events, as could be clearly seen in other professions that first welcomed it before the legal profession. It’s also observable that there are some legal and ethical issues that beg for immidiate attention by the use of AI in our society. This should best left as the topic of another day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALKASIM ABUBAKAR is a student of law

ABU zaria, for corrections, suggestions or observations He can be reached via; [email protected]

REFERRAL LINKS.

(1) <https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/ai-in-law-legal-practice-current-applications> assessed on 24/6/2020

(2 )>http://ravellaw.com/products/<assessed on 24/6/2020

(3)>https://ebrevia.com/#why-ebrevia-and-more<assessed on 24/6/2020

(4)>https://compose.law/?utm_source=casetexthomepage<assessed on 24/6/2020

(5)>https://angel.co/company/legal-robot<assessed on 24/6/2020

(6)>https://www.legalsifter.com/legalsifter-product<assessed on 27/6/2020

(7)>https://kirasystems.com/benefits<assessed on 24/6/2020

(8)>https://leverton.ai<assessed on 24/6/2020

(9)>https://www.lawgeex.com<assessed on 24/6/2020

(10)>https://www.rossintelligence.com<assessed on 25/6/2020

For knowledge and Justice