Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1359283
NEWS 8.4.2021 Alexiei Dingli Prof Alexiei Dingli is a Professor of AI at the University of Malta and has been conducting research and working in the field of AI for more than two decades, assisting different companies to implement AI solutions. He forms part of the Malta.AI task-force, set up by the Maltese government, aimed at making Malta one of the top AI countries in the world D id you ever realise that your next lawyer might be an Artificial Intel- ligence (AI) system, debating at the speed of light with an AI judge? Well, we're not quite there yet, so you won't get legal counsel from your robotic vac- uum cleaner any time soon, but things are moving relatively fast. A few years back, an AI law- yer called LawGeex challenged 20 top US corporate lawyers with decades of experience. e task was relatively sim- ple. ey were each given five Non-Disclosure Agreements (standard contracts used in most business deals to estab- lish a confidential relation- ship). Each lawyer had to re- view them and identify any issues. e top US corporate lawyers took on average one and a half hours to review them, and they achieved an average accuracy rate of 85%. LawGeex, on the other hand, completed the task in 26 seconds with an accura- cy of 94%. Of course, this does not mark the end of the law profession, but it does raise several important questions. Just think about all the time spent by lawyers reviewing documents keeping in mind that the error rate increases when they get tired. What if we use an AI system instead? One which is consistent and never tires. e lawyer's job would then change to a reviewer who uses his intuition, spot-checks the documents, and validates the AI's work. Such a workflow re- duces the costs for both the le- gal firm and their clients while also freeing up skilled lawyers to spend their time on high- er-level tasks. But AI systems are capable of much more. Lawyer Bots sup- port law firms and their clients 24/7. e following are a few examples: • ROSS, an IBM Watson chatbot, helps lawyers in their research. Users query ROSS using every- day language; it identi- fies relevant cases and returns the required in- formation. Furthermore, it constantly monitors court decisions in the dead of night and sends alerts when it notices something interesting. • BillyBot is a junior clerk robot that provides es- sential information to online users. It then re- fers them to free online legal resources, which helps them decide on a way forward. • Automio is an inter- viewing bot that helps lawyers get the initial information from their clients and services them with the most common requests. It reduces the time lawyers spend on repetitive and lower val- ue work. e clients are, in general, more satisfied since they can get access to their legal documents anytime they need them. Some of these AI systems even go a step further by repre- senting their clients in simple cases. e DoNotPay bot is a chatbot aimed at assisting peo- ple when they get a fine. Even though most governments of- fer several ways of contesting those fines, in reality, very few people know how to do that. is bot asks the users to give him the required information; it automatically generates a contestation letter and sends it on their behalf. In the first year of opera- tion, the DoNotPay bot helped around a quarter of a million people based in London and New York. It won more than two-thirds of all the cases sub- mitted, and its clients saved more than ree Million Euros in fines. Finally, AI can also help law firms peep into the crystal ball of future court cases. By ana- lysing past proceedings, the system can perform predic- tive analytics on the data and extract meaningful insights. It can highlight the most critical elements in specific situations. It might also identify particu- lar pitfalls which affected the outcome. Furthermore, it can predict the success or otherwise of the case before it even starts. e amount of intelligence availa- ble to law firms that use AI is endless and can help lawyers equip themselves better before taking on a court case. As can be seen from these few examples, AI lawyers will become instrumental and offer a competitive advantage to to- day's law firms. ey will be crucial to make mundane jobs more efficient with AI augmentation (where an AI supports the lawyer's work). In some cases, the AI lawyer will even take over the case and handle simple tasks. One thing is clear, working alone is no longer an option since the results are way more inferior than having the lawyer and the AI system collaborat- ing. What's even more impor- tant is that clients will now get access to better services at a lower price. Of course, this change won't happen overnight, but to gain a competitive advantage, now is the right time to invite AI legal partners to join law firms. A.I. legislation - A look at the robotic side of law firms