It has been a long time in the making but it finally happened. A major US law firm (Bakeler & Hosteler, about 1000 attorneys) just signed up as the first customer for IBM's "artificial intelligence attorney". The AI attorney is part of Watson...IBM's rather famous artificial intelligence engine.
A lot of people are wondering what the long term consequences society will suffer once knowledge can be disseminated via AI units in a coherent and meaningful way.
The business of law is one industry which might change more than any other business because of it. By outsourcing the legal research supporting or disproving a legal theory army's of lawyers might become irrelevant.
In the future all what it takes to build a case (or retort) is a well written query to retrieve the information in a contextual relevant matter which might be assembled by an army of lawyer otherwise.
The implications over the long run are staggering. Theoretically a 3 lawyer law firm will be able to muster the same quality of legal work as a 100 attorney firm.
Of course...legal research is just the first step. Once the AI unit has been on the job for a certain period it should be able to output the requested information in a style which can be cut and paste into a legal motion. Rather than the attorney drafting the motion (at $ 500 or more the hour) it will be a cut and paste job..potentially done by a paralegal.
Of course...we are a bit away from that but anyone who believes it will be decades rather than a few short years might be in for a rude awakening.
The business of law has been fighting a need to reduce costs and an unwillingness by clients to pay more ever since the 2008 recession.
An outsourcing solution which produces equal or better quality at a greatly reduced cost has been the impetus of countless other industries to set up business processes in India or the Philippines. (or anywhere else for that matter).
You can bet that there will be countless other law firms who will follow the first one. If history is any indications once an industry starts outsourcing the process will not stop.
At the end of the day outsourcing legal work to an AI engine might make the business of law more democratic and cheaper for the users ...and this would be good news for everyone apart from the individual attorney who might not be able to bill the same amount of hours.