Joining a panel at ILTACon 2015 with Ryan McClead of Norton Rose Fulbright, Stuart Barr of HighQ, Joshua Lenon of Clio, and Noah Waisberg of Kira Systems—titled Legal Technology Innovation: Bolstering AND Destroying the Legal Profession—I decided to come at the technology question from the human side, to speculate about what humans are still good for in a technology-saturated world of legal services.
I concede. I am obsolete. The robots are winning.
Fastcase is a better legal researcher than I am—despite a University of Chicago law degree, a federal court clerkship, and a hand in hundreds of briefs and memos.
Recommind Axcelerate is a better document reviewer than I am—despite tutelage by demi-gods of the American bar, and years of experience, some of it in unheated warehouses and abandoned salt mines.
And of course Google is a better driver than I am.
Nonetheless, for a while, I have work to do.
Kira is not a better contract analyzer than I am—my pattern-recognizing brain is more precise, more adaptable, and faster than Kira’s algorithms. And the algorithms need training, so I can have a job as an algo trainer—like a dog trainer, but without a whistle or a biscuit.
But … Kira’s algorithms are getting better and its computers are getting faster. My brain is not, alas.
So, one day . . . poof! ZMP for me—that’s Zero Marginal Product, the economists’ term for adding no value at all.
As Harvard professor Bill Bossert said many years ago—