There is no doubt that the advent of technology has revolutionized most sectors positively, especially the legal sector. Its boons ranges from its accuracy, inability to get bored, e-discovery and access to critical information using cloud solutions, its power of analytics to reducing the time spent to complete certain tasks. In addition, the incorporation of AI-based softwares have been tremendously helpful to Lawyers in conducting research. Take Leverton as a prime example, its cloud-based tool can be used to read contracts at high speeds in different languages. However, it is widely believed that technology will displace lawyers in the nearest future. According to Forbes, it is predicted that AI will likely eliminate most humans from the paralegal industry.
Can Technology really take the place of a Lawyer? Will law firms become extinct or non-existent?
Despite the growing concern of jobs being at risk or being ousted from jobs or jobs being stolen by robots faster than ever or being rendered obsolete, nevertherless, it is a known fact that AI cannot automate all tasks. Have you ever imagined being in courtroom with a robot as the prosecuting Lawyer or a robot arguing with the judge or a court hearing filled with robots? What of scenarios in which a client is unduly taken to the police station and the client has to call his Lawyer (Mr. Robot in this case) to come over, will the robot be able to provide the client with his desired legal solution? It is hard to imagine that a robot will be able to comprehend a Yoruba speaking client in the courtroom, especially during unpredictable trials when the lawyer is expected to be the voice of the client.
Indeed, there is a great difference in the legal industry with the rapid infiltration of technology, for instance, it facilitates the overall productivity of Lawyers by helping with routine laborious tasks such as drafting of contracts and the analysis of legal documents, identification of forged documents, conducting research work, prediction of how specific judges may decide cases based on analytics, substitution of all legal administrative jobs, and the provision of basic solutions for efficient output, however, the input from human cannot also be over-emphasized. As much as technology has improved a lot, these merits of technology are eclipsed by the inability of robots to really have the intellectual capability of human intelligence and they are not configured to be able to correctly read expressions on clients’ faces or apply intuition or replace the golden face-to-face interaction. Consequently, it will take decades for robots to completely replace human lawyers.
The truth is, technology is growing rapidly, thus, law firms need to “up their game”, leverage on the new trend, embrace it and tap into the new trend to complement and optimize their daily activities.
