Hype, horror or hope?
If you’re like me, you will be fed up reading reports of artificial intelligence (AI) robotic domination and the end of the legal profession as we know it.
If you’re like me, you will be fed up reading reports of artificial intelligence (AI) robotic domination and the end of the legal profession as we know it, the end of the world and, more importantly, the end of ordering food face-to-face with a person at McDonalds!
There are far more tech savvy people than me that can spout with authority about the differences between chatbots, robots, AI and algorithms. I don’t really care about that – what I care about is what impact this may have on my business and what I can do now to start positioning the firm to remain competitive. If you remember the Terminator films, a sort of resistance fightback against the synthetic intelligence machine network of Skynet.
Well not quite. I believe all of these new ways of producing work and services to clients must be embraced. Rather than seeing it as a bad Terminator, as in the first film, we need to look at this as if it is a good Terminator, like in the sequels, here to help us. We know that the big boys and girls in our large cities have been investing in computer learning for many years: RAVN, ROSS and Kira are names we’re all familiar with. Massive projects with large budgets and enormous IT teams. I don’t know about you but I don’t have access to any of that!
So what to do? I would suggest starting small. Find a work type, or part of a work type or process where value can be added by having that task or tasks undertaken by a machine. Speak to a number of AI/robotic providers and find a fit where the machine capability currently exists and matches your need. Look at administrative tasks such as data cleansing, client relationship marketing, file opening, client due diligence. Look at how you engage with clients and whether chatbots could enhance that process by answering enquires and managing the distribution of work. Look at document preparation and drafting. Look at legal research. Look at litigation outcome predictors.
We have, in testing, a robot that will open our files (complete the contact, client and matter detail insertion into our practice management system), perform the identification checks, prepare the terms of engagement and other initial paperwork, and send them to the client as an email, with encouragement to use an electronic signature process. Skynet it is not. But a good start it is. All of this stuff seems a bit of a leap of faith. Will it work for us? Will it improve our service? Will it save money? Although ‘having a robot’ may sound sexy, many partners will think of it as a gimmick and that there is no substitute for a person doing the job.
This may be based on concerns over the robustness and reliability of the machine – which is ironic as, if properly set up, the machine is more robust and reliable than a human. Just ask my children, who ordered their Big Mac and fries from a touchscreen yesterday.
