Page 44 - CCCA 259155 Magazine_Winter 2016

{ LEGAL INNOVATION }

A TECHNICIAN OF THE

ROBOT REVOLUTION

By Kirsten Thompson

I worry about my role in the future. Sure, pundits and thought

leaders call it “legal innovation” but, frankly, I’m at risk of
being replaced by a robot. And, my friend, so are you.

he machines have already consolidated also help clients realize better outcomes, This reduces disruption for clients, and
their gains in automated industries design more robust compliance and gov- increases our own relevance and credibil-
Tand are continuing their migration ernance structures, and reduce costs. ity in areas that truly matter.
into white-collar work. Artifcial intelli- Our clients are no slouches in this What if a machine could ask you all
gence (AI) and cognitive computing, the space either. Large institutional clients those questions a lawyer is probably going
“next generation” of computing, will ren- are reducing the ranks of lawyers and to ask? In a wrongful dismissal action, for
der most paperwork (and pushers of pa- paper-pushers, and hiring coders and instance, there are a lot of routine ques-
per) redundant. Even contracts, the bread developers. Why? Because the fnancial tions. This is the realm of chatbots. It’s
and butter of most lawyers, will be auto- burden of regulatory compliance has the already happening: in the UK, a chatbot
mated—there are already small-scale ex- potential to be signifcantly reduced by for fghting parking fnes has overturned
amples of self-executing “smart contracts.” “RegTech” (but not replaced—as a col- $4 million in fnes since 2014, and won
In terms of litigation, not only are com- league with an anti-money laundering 160,000 out of 250,000 (a win-loss ratio
puters demonstrating pretty good batting practice keeps reminding me, “You can’t of around 65%).
averages in predicting case outcomes (the outsource compliance!”). More than anything, “legal innovation”
judicial decisions of the European Court In-house counsel are embracing in- means that lawyers themselves will need
of Human Rights were recently predict- novation primarily to drive price down. to innovate. Those already practicing will
ed at 79% accuracy using AI) but they The next step is to enhance processes. In need to embrace new technologies and
are also pretty good at predicting your other words, improve legal processes to new ideas, and—more challenging—be
personal batting average. That’s right— make legal work fow better. For instance, willing to rethink the old ways of doing
there’s at least one service (Premonition my frm is working to automate the client things. Those just entering the feld will
Analytics) that uses AI, predictive analyt- interface—think portals and dashboards. have an opportunity to entirely redefne
ics and data mining to fgure out which We already do large-scale process reen- what it means to practice law.
lawyers win the most before which judge. gineering work (e.g., ever wonder how I’m fortunate that my practice centres
There’s also Lex Machina, which many hands in your organization touch on technology and data management. I
mines litigation data to generate insights that contract during its lifespan and am, in a nutshell, a technician in the ro-
about judges, lawyers, parties and case whether they all really need to?) and have bot revolution. And initial concerns aside,
subjects. Law frms use it to land new cli- had sophisticated project management I welcome our new robot overlords. ❚
ents and win lawsuits. In-house counsel tools in place for some time.
use it to manage outside counsel and set In-house counsel are also redefning
litigation strategy. what is truly legal work. This a signif- Kirsten Thompson is Partner in
McCarthy Tétrault’s National
These technologies represent a funda- cant direction in which legal innovation is Technology Group. She leads
mental shift in how cases will be fought. headed. Once legal services are unbundled, the frm’s Cybersecurity, Privacy
It’s not enough to have better law or better you would be surprised at the number of and Data Management group,
facts; you now need a better algorithm. things that don’t actually need a lawyer. as well as the frm’s E-Discovery
I’m a traitor to my own kind in that I A good example of this is the infor- and Data Management Team.
work within my frm’s innovation prac- mation-gathering phase of a fle. Much With a focus on providing privacy, data security,
information governance and e-discovery advice to
tice. We are focused on using technology of this can be done internally (and often clients across industries, she has a wide advocacy
to not only enhance our own processes but remotely) under the guidance of lawyers. and advisory practice.

44 CCCA MAGAZINE | WINTER 2016 HIVER