The world is transforming with the advancement of technology. Artificial
Intelligence, also known as AI, is one such hot discipline that is merging
itself with various fields as becoming part of everyday life. The recent
development of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper, WordTune etc. have made our
life easier. It is speculated that without the basic understanding of
functioning of AI, it will diminish the working opportunities for humans. Thus,
everyone needs to possess a slight understanding of AI. The field of law will
not be an exception, nevertheless.
This article will help you to understand how AI is being used in the
professional field of law whether in framing arguments by lawyer in courts, the
teaching pedagogy in law school, enhance legislation Process, judgement
prediction, researching methodology and creation of jobs.
What is Artificial Intelligence and How it works?
AI is a field of science that performs different tasks like how the human mind
performs. By applying its own algorithm likewise, a human intelligence applies
its reasoning.
It can be used to predict outcomes based on our input, patterns beneficial for
us, segregate data around the internet and an analyzation of data with different
methods as how a human intelligence does.
AI first gathers the data that we have imputed or data that has already been
computed by it. Then, we must specify the AI tool for the output we want from
our data. Then, the machine performs the function on basis of algorithm
implemented in AI And with its knowledge it does process the data and finally
provides output. For example - Recently, the voice assistants such as google
assistant in android phones, Siri in IOS and Alexa by Amazon work on the model
of AI.
What Is Law?
Law is a system of rules or guidelines, required to be followed by people to
keep a balanced environment and stabilization in society. The law is a dynamic
subject. The transformation of technology for centuries has not kept the
dimensions of the field of law limited rather it has adjusted itself with the
former.
Law as a discipline has traces since ancient times. With the change in society,
the law has also evolved with time Aiming to Maintain peace, harmony and
regulate the conducts of human beings. As such as judicial system can trace back
its origin to ancient Greek society so as in ancient China there were a code of
conduct which was followed till 19th century. The Purpose was to always Restrain
people to cross the boundary of limits which can create havoc in society.
Correlation Between AI and Law
Law and AI have a very close relationship as in today's world it can provide an
effective solution to paperwork and management in the legal profession. Worldly,
the legal profession has started seeing rapid growth and technological upgradation. Courts also use AI to make legal decisions. Courts in the United
States use sophisticated algorithms to arrest defendants. For example, 'Public
Safety Assessment Tool Used in 21 US Jurisdictions to Determine Risks to
Defendants.' [1].
The frontiers of AI have also started to be used in other
field of study Such as in Medical Science it has been used to analyze
relationship between clinical date and patient outcomes, In Accounting it has
been used to reconcile financial activities quickly and proficiently. AI Can be
a boost source of transforming field of law. Similarly, it is anticipated that
the functions of lawyers would change rather than vanish and become more
increasing technological interaction. As a result, there is general agreement
that human direction paired with the technological acumen of AI could result in
very good outcomes in the legal sector exercise [2].
Benefits of AI in the field of Law
The benefits of AI in the field of law are:
- Framing arguments:
In courts, the lawyers does the argument that will help their client to win their case. With the help of AI, it can help lawyers to frame their arguments by predicting the rationality of opposition lawyers to fight a case. It can study the patterns of lawyers from analyzing their precedent cases and can give an outcome which can certainly provide an edge over others. Furthermore, legal AI allows lawyers to perform more work, with less effort, and more money. AI tools like Quick Check can analyze draft arguments and suggest corrections or identify overlooked legal precedents.
- Pedagogy:
Law school plays a crucial role in formation of a student to become a lawyer. It can be said that the roots or crux or base in the form of personality, knowledge, is developed in Law School of students which will determine their future in legal profession. The AI can benefit the teachers or faculty staff by analyzing the future of different branches like IPR, business law, Criminal Law, contract Law etc. in the respective territory which can be city, state or a country. Also, the teaching methods can be more student oriented. For this allows them to teach a specific branch which will have a high demand in the nearby future and helps to motivate the students to grasp theory thoroughly. Thus, it can act as a guidance to the law student for selecting their area of specialization.
- Research Methodology:
AI has also created a way to access everything you need, legal information from around the world. Because with the help of AI, lawyers today can do most of their work and legal research online. Therefore, lawyers today do most of their legal work from information providers, e.g. Lexis, or publicly available resources such as SCC Online (India), Justia (US) or CanLII (Canada) or general search engines like google. Updated sources of law such as the judiciary opinions, judgments, laws, regulations are everything Available online and accessible from anywhere on the web in the world.
This greatly influenced the development cross-border legal studies and legal research [3]. As a result, LexisNexis continued to operate improved legal research resulting in more user-friendly approach mechanisms, extensive databases, and innovative electronic research methods [4]. For example, currently LexisNexis had 15,000 databases and more than 9 million subscribers worldwide and Westlaw is number one online legal research service in the US, UK, and Australia over 40,000 legal information databases [5].
- Judgement Prediction :
Legal matters typically consist of hundreds of court decisions (prior cases), making it insurmountable for lawyers to analyze all such past decisions. In this regard, AI tools help overcome the challenge by providing a more objective prediction of the likely outcome of a particular case. For example, look at existing studies that used AI to predict up to 70% success rate of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in 2016[6]. In addition, AI has been used to predict a Supreme Court Ruling in the USA, which accurately predicted over 70% of decisions [7].
- Enhance Legislation Process:
AI can provide decision support to lawmakers by analyzing various factors and predicting the possible outcomes of different policy options. This can help improve decision-making accuracy and minimize the risk of unintended consequences. AI tools can help lawmakers' draught responses for legislators, improve the quality of their research, learn about any Bill, create briefs, and provide knowledge on specific House rules, legislative writing, amendments, interventions, and other topics. Legislative procedures may be streamlined and made more effective as a result. Recently, The American House of Representatives has implemented an AI tool to automate the comparison of differences between bills, amendments, and existing legislation [8].
- Creation of Jobs:
It is hypothesized that, in the future, AI would lead to the formation of new positions for Lawyers in addition to requiring them to take on new duties within the field of legal practices. Forms of employment for Lawyers include Legal Knowledge Engineer, Legal process analysts, legal technologists, and so forth.
Conclusion
In this article, the main contention was to highlight the benefits of AI in the
field of law or the positive impacts of AI in law. By helping the lawyers to
minimize their workload for framing arguments to the creation of jobs for the
future aspiring law students, AI was a major driving force.
The impact of AI in
predicting the judgements and enhancing legislative process by its tremendous
computational and analytical capability of a vast amount of data and uses brute
force to process it, will become apparent in the future. The impact of AI on
legal research will go much beyond simple automation as Just a few decades ago,
it was a thing that lawyers could only do in a brick-and-mortar library.
Today,
thanks to the development of Weak AI, much of the work that makes up legal
research is being done using AI tools with minimal human involvement. This has
led to tremendous efficiency (time, energy, and resources) in doing legal
research and legal work. Thus, it stands a great reminder to all the people
associated with the field of law how to familiarize themselves with AI and make
the best use out of it.
Bibliography
- https://www.arnoldventures.org/newsroom/more-than-20-cities-and-states-adopt-risk-assessment-tool-to-help-judges-decide-which-defendants-to-detain-prior-to-trial
- Eric, B., & Andrew, M. (2014). The Second Machine Age. W. Norton & Company Inc.
- Benjamin, A., Anthony, N., & Albert, Y. (2017). How AI Will Affect the Practice of Law. 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3066816
- Frank, Y., Liu, J. F., Dittakavi, N. R., & Tsegaye, B. (2008). Pennsylvania Legal Research Handbook. ALM Media, LLC.
- Hannah, A. (2016). AI is the Future of Law - And Lawyers Know It. Dataconomy, 1-7.
- Aletras, N., Tsarapatsanis, D., & Preoţiuc, P. (2016). Predicting judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: a Natural Language Processing perspective. Peer Journal of Computer Science, 2, 93-94. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.93
- Katz, D. M., Bommarito, M. J., & Blackman, J. (2017). A General Approach for Predicting the Behaviour of the Supreme Court of the United States. PLoS ONE, 12 (4), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174698
- https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/revolutionizing-legislation-throughai
- Whittlestone, J., Nyrup, R., & Alexandrova, A. (2019). Ethical and societal implications of algorithms, data, and AI: a roadmap for research. Nuffield Foundation.
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