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Ouch! Some harsh remarks by some learned friends!

As someone who is planning to run the Legal IT roundtable on August 1st, I thought I better chime in...

Far from gloom, Artificial Intelligence (which I just happen to have written my final year degree paper on all those years ago - and no, I'm NOT a programme develop) will help seasoned solicitors who today struggle with technology basics. (I have several people in mind as I write!) Knowledge management for instance -- particularly the deposit and retrieval of key information, both across the firm and beyond, will be much more intelligently dealt with (simplifying things for the end users). We're seeing signs of this already. You can soon ask "Cortana" to "show me cases in the past 50 years where a ruling on [fill in the blank] was made by a High Court judge" and 'she' will present you with relevant information along with 'intelligent' questions such as "Would you like me to limit the search to England & Wales"...and the conversation continues.

Fraud will be impacted with clients needing to look into a camera before they can change their bank details for money transfers, and AI built-in to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) will mean that information can be shared, checked and verified with their bank automatically - literally in an blink of an eye :)

Clients, third parties can ask their AI friend (Suri, Cortana, that other one or any one of the new ones that will arrive - 'who' will eventually all merge into a one aggregated AI pool - let's call this web 3.0) about the latest state of their case, saving you the trouble of dealing with annoying questions by phone, fax and email.

I could go on. I won't. Not yet anyway.

In short, it is the IT industry supplying the legal profession that will have to change, not the profession that dates back centuries and sits above politics let alone technology.

AI is merely a way of asking a lot of "what if" questions from knowledgeable people at digital speeds. (It literally is a string of "If X then do Y" statements wrapped up in sexy user interfaces). So it will only EVER be as good as the minds who feed it. Those legal minds will need to understand that most human thing of all, a 'sense' of justice -- not to mention history and an ability to deal with people from across all walks of life in an adaptable way.

So even if tomorrow's AI technology was available today, it would take multiple decades to programme that knowledge into it's databanks.

In my humble opinion, in the next five years the legal (and related professions) need to accept that their processes and ways of working can (and will) change for the better in the digitally connected collaborate age (with "collaboration" being the biggest transformational change, not IT) but that they should never expect to become the process or technical engineers themselves anymore than solicitors are expected to be accountants or architects today.

It is fair to say however that future legal professions should be more aware of the capabilities and advantages that AI can bring, just as it helps to have at least a basic understanding of business, accounting and finance, but it is Legal IT vendors that must adapt to move away from the tired old "our systems are build by solicitors for solicitors" (then expecting firms to dance to their fast outdated tune) to actually engaging with their customers to embrace what AI can do to add greater value to the profession and the people it serves.

I would always welcome opportunities to discuss this with people at the front line of the profession, and if anyone would like to join the roundtable I hope to run on 1st August please do give this a thumbs up and, or get in touch -- I shall share the details as and when they materialise.