Many of us fear that the machines will slowly take over and from the looks of it, there might be a time when they will even replace humans in the courtroom, perhaps making it harder for fresh law graduates to find a job straight out of law school. That can be the norm when law firms start hiring “lawyers” powered by artificial intelligence like veteran law firm BakerHostetler did recently.
BakerHostetler has “hired” ROSS, it’s first digital attorney, who will be performing duties as a legal researcher at the law firm. ROSS is attached with the firm’s bankruptcy team and will be helping them with researching cases and facts as they build their cases.
This may not be the only law firm that sees that digital lawyers powered by artificial intelligence can prove to be more competent researchers. Andrew Arruda, the co-founder of ROSS Intelligence, the company that made this AI has said that other law firms are also considering to bring ROSS onboard.
ROSS has been built on IBM’s Watson super-computer and it answers questions by quickly analyzing billions of documents to offer a detailed answer. It provides citations for answers and the more it’s used, the more it improves. It’s also capable of keeping track of changes in law that might affect an ongoing case.
So the machines are effectively starting in the basement at law firms, who knows how long it’s going to take before they’re winning trials for us. I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.
Filed in . Read more about Artificial Intelligence. Source: qz