Artificial Intelligence & the Law Firm: The Future Is Now (AI was the Core Theme this Year)
Imagine if you could read three million articles on a legal issue, remember everything, connect the dots where you see relationships and then deliver an analysis in a concise package. That's the promise of AI when it's applied to law, medicine and other fields where the volume of potentially useful information far out-paces our human ability to place it in context.
Actually, it's a promise already being fulfilled at some law firms, according to Brian Kuhn, Watson Business Solutions executive at IBM Corporation.
One practical example: Watson reads clients' billing guidelines, analyzes their acceptance and rejection of bills and then makes recommendations to attorneys on how to bill more effectively. In another example cited by Kuhn, Watson can read millions of articles on a public policy issue and then deliver the best arguments it finds both for and against a position.
Cognitive computing will not replace attorneys, Kuhn said, but forward-thinking law firms are recognizing the possibilities of systems like Watson to get ahead of their competitors. Someday, they may need it just to keep up.