Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Yes, AI has Made THE Leap!

Posted on by

For the past decade, I have been consistently extolling the virtues and concerns of the impending “Exponential Technology” era.  Well, it’s here. 

The first manifestation of this was OpenAI’s DALL-E product, which I encountered at an MIT conference in April 2022. DALL-E 2 is a website that allows users to type in concepts or phrases and instantly generate corresponding artwork or images in any desired form. The results can be continuously refined to produce truly extraordinary creations.

Here are a few examples:

“A hamburger in the shape of a Rubik’s cube, professional food photography”

Image credit: Michael Howe-Ely

“A BBQ that is alive, in the style of a Pixar animated movie”

Image credit: Michael Howe-Ely

I recently had the opportunity to present these ideas, along with their likely implications, to a legal audience at Thomson Reuters’ Synergy 2022 conference. It quickly became clear that the effects of this technology will extend far beyond the realm of law, touching upon fields as diverse as writing, coding, financial modeling, prediction markets, business planning, and more.

Just a few weeks after my presentation, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a tool that demonstrates similar capabilities with language as DALL-E 2 does with images. I have spent the past month experimenting with ChatGPT, and the results are nothing short of astounding. Though it is not yet perfect, ChatGPT is incredibly powerful and can produce impressive results with minimal input. For instance, within just ten seconds, it was able to generate a fully-fledged lease document, complete with all necessary parameters.

Here is an example.

Within 10 seconds a full lease is produced with all parameters added. Just a portion displayed below.

Similarly, ChatGPT was able to create code for a smart contract to establish a law firm’s own blockchain-based token system in just 15 seconds.  This one would allow for a law firm to have its own token, as an incentive for clients to use them, earning them a discount each matter they brought.

Having built these before, this was very impressive as a first pass and completed in 15 seconds.

It is becoming increasingly clear that AI will have a profound impact on “white collar” jobs in the coming years, contrary to the initial belief that it would primarily affect manual labor first. The potential implications of this technology are truly staggering and will likely bring about significant changes to the way we work and live.

There are a ton of other nuances to this, which I will be writing and vlogging about in the coming weeks.

ABA Center for Innovation – Trends Report 2022

Posted on by

Happy to have played a small role in this report with sections on:

  • Defining a Legal Platform
  • What is an API in the Legal Industry
  • AI – Artificial Intelligence in Legal
  • What is the Metaverse and Why it is Important

The Innovation Trends Report will focus on case studies in three areas: Internal ABA Innovations, Advances in Legal Technology, and Regulatory Innovation. It will also feature a case study on Utah’s sandbox, exclusively in the Innovation Trends Report, by sandbox participant, RocketLawyer. This Report is the inaugural edition intended as an annual publication by the Center.

Please see the full report here: Innovation Trends Report

Artificial Intelligence and the UK vs. US Approach

Posted on by

Originally published on Legal Insights UK & Ireland

By Joseph Raczynski, edits, questions and preface by Ann Lundin and Joe Davis.

Artificial intelligence will threaten most jobs at some point soon—and new jobs will emerge’

The impact of innovative technology is undoubtedly going to radically reshape the delivery of legal services in the years ahead. To help consider the extent of this impact within the legal industry – and indeed, the current state of play, Legal Insights UK & Ireland spoke to Technologist and Futurist at Thomson Reuters, Joe Raczynski.

Tell us something about Joe Raczynski. You have been labelled as a ‘super geek’. How did you achieve this unique status?

It’s actually ‘Sir Super Geek of the Square Table’—as the Queen kindly bestowed recently. More seriously, I am very fortunate. My personal passions and professional career have spectacularly collided. Since I was young I would tinker with electronics, including building a home security system from spare computer parts, penetration testing networks as a white hat hacker, building websites and eventually fiddling with all things computer and technology related. For me, pure satisfaction is derived from being an early adopter of a technology, immersing myself in it, and then sharing that with others—ultimately seeing their eyes grow in amazement, interest and most importantly extrapolation. I still recall describing ‘digital cash’, e.g. Bitcoin, in 2011 to friends and seeing their awe and skepticism. On the other side, I bought Google Glass and trumpeted its potential, until the overwhelming collective societal shame forced them back into their box. The technology in a more robust form will return in a few years, I promise.

Tell us about your role at Thomson Reuters.

I oversee a wonderfully nimble team of technical client managers. Our collective goal is bifurcated. Part one is to assure that all our (80-plus) Thomson Reuters Legal products and services work well for our customers. Part two, which is ever growing, is sitting down with our customers across law firms, corporations, and government agencies to understand their technology initiatives. We are able to see the trends across the various facets of our legal customers, and serve as technology evangelists to share those insights with our customers. Historically, we have also listened to them about where ‘tool gaps’ lie, and either code those solutions ourselves, or work with the larger Thomson Reuters to build solutions.

Does the progressive development of AI and robots threaten your job or anyone else’s? If so, how soon?

AI will threaten most jobs at some point soon, mine included but a tad further out. Anything repeatable, routine, or even easy to adapt to ‘if then’ statements, will be impacted. Many of the traditional services positions will fade away first: drivers, wait staff, store clerks, and then some professional positions, such as project managers, will be next. Mentally, we all need to prepare for this eventuality. The positive is that new industries will evolve which haven’t been invented yet, which will spur new jobs.

How is AI currently disrupting the legal industry?

In the legal space, you can already see it on the eDiscovery front. Eight years ago, new lawyers might be tasked with document review spending 80 hours a week. Now law firms need far fewer eyes reviewing documents, because of AI infused tools. Document automation tools like Contract Express or Drafting Assistant make law firms much more efficient by replicating and modifying exemplar documents with ease. Those firms that adapt soonest, will be best positioned moving forward.

What do you make of law firms engaging more directly with incubators/tech start-ups?

There are several things afoot. Law firms traditionally were technology risk adverse, but that is rapidly changing. The first tug on the law firm are clients asking for them to be more agile forcing new mindsets. Another pull is that law firms tend to be a highly profitable industry, and for that reason small companies have now cast their gaze on their large margins. You have hundreds of new start-ups seizing upon niches of the legal business, be it the practice or business of law. Lastly, law firms are seeing the above and deciding to band together with start-ups to test the waters on new products and services. This has a secondary purpose, it also better positions the firm as forward thinking for new clients.

How do UK and US large law firms’ attitude differ in their receptiveness to new legal technology, and willingness to invest?

I have seen a wide variety of responses on adoption of legal technology at US law firms. Recently one firm stated, ‘we are not going to invest in AI because we are an insurance firm and it will not help us’. Conversely, I have seen several large law firm tossing millions of dollars at internal initiatives to develop new tools. My experience with UK firms demonstrates a real tilt toward innovation perhaps more universally than in the US. It seems that currently the push to be more efficient in the UK surpasses that need in the US. Despite major transformative landscape changes in the US, there are clusters of firms that will not change—until forced to do so, which will likely happen within five years. In general UK firms are thinking more like a business.

Does the growing necessity to adopt time-saving, efficiency-driven legal technology put pressure on small and medium-sized law firms to invest? What will likely happen if they don’t?

Personally, I believe the medium sized firms could be best positioned with new efficiency driven legal solutions. To that end, I am starting to see medium sized firms competing against the biggest law firms. Five years ago, this wasn’t as feasible. No matter the size of the firm, they must have a keen eye to investigate the latest legal technology trends, tools, and service models. If they don’t, they will miss opportunities—and a streak of missed opportunities will lead to significant risk of survival.

 

MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain Busts Open New Thinking

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab – Cambridge MA – October 2017 – In one of the more unique and unusual conferences I have participated, the inaugural MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain was a meeting of 200 minds from across academia, law firm, and corporations big and small.  It included IBM Watson as well as CodeX, NASA scientists, Baker & Hostetler, a host of other Am Law firms, and startups galore.  Led by the gregarious MIT visiting scientist, Daniel “Dazza” Greenwood, who served as the master of ceremonies for the two day workshop.

20171031_091458

Dazza Greenwood – MIT Scientist – summarizing the day

What was so unusual was that after the keynote each day, the planning for the remainder of the breakouts happened in real-time.  Dazza asked the crowd who would like to run a session and to describe the topic.  Once that individual did so, Dazza then asked who would like to join that working session.  The sessions were added to the agenda immediately followed by the commencing of those sessions.  From the attendees the following topics bubbled up on day one:

  • Identity Management & Records Keeping – Chris Jagers and Joseph Raczynski
    • How do we begin the discussion of digital records on blockchain?
  • Automated LLC – James Miller and Harrison Perl
    • Project to checklist requirements to incorporate or register legal entities in all 50 states
  • VAT Coin – Joseph Kessler and Brian Ulicny
    • Governance is 75% of entities. Is that correct?  Does it fit this context?
  • Energy Utility Token – Jonathan, Michael, and Harrison
    • How can such a process be securitized and how do we get the revenue back in a way that is sustainable and trusted by investors?
  • Supply Chain – Jaipat and Gurvinder
    • Is there a need for a new area of law called, “Provenance Law”?
  • Bankruptcy – Bob Craig and Nina Kilbride
    • With cryptocurrency as collateral, how do you classify the property? How do you perfect ownership rights?

I had the opportunity to join several of these discussions over the two days.  Honestly there were one or two slight misses, where the tables were large and attendees from various backgrounds of familiarity on blockchain and AI led to a mixed conversation.  However, the hits – they were transformative.  How often do you have top legal minds from Am Law firms, NASA engineers, MIT data scientists and nonprofits mix together on a process surrounding “smart contracts” that leverage algorithms to develop an automated workflow?  The session called ditDIY Composable Smart Contracts, Modular Law – led by Vienna Loi, was a hit.  The NASA scientist and her team are actively building this concept out.  Think of it as code (smart contract) that when a certain event is triggered kicks off another event which continues to invoke other acts, all of which are recorded and maintained on a blockchain.  It is the future of this space.

The excitement was palpable.  You could see the evolution that is beginning to take place in Legal as we go from a general awareness of these technologies, to conceptual design of possible solutions.  MIT is fostering the creativity through this platform in their first attempt at bringing all parties to the table.

In the next post, I will dive deeper into Digital Identity using blockchains.

ILTACON 2016: Looking into the Future & Building the Exponential Law Firm

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

“In the not too distant future, exponential technology could upend the $650-billion-dollar legal industry — or, there will be a $78 to $120 trillion-dollar opportunity for agile players who are prepared.”

— Rohit Talwar

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — At ILTACON 2016, Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future, spoke about the disruption in the legal industry occurring around us and more precisely which technologies will have the largest impact on law firms in the near future.

In his discussion “Building the Exponential Law Firm,” Talwar began with the baseline of Moore’s Law — the theory that processing speeds of computers double roughly every 12 to 18 months. Building on that, he added what he considers to be the core of this exponential growth: machine learning. These are machines with the ability to create visual perception, reasoning, planning, intuition and decision-making all starting from a simple ruleset.

The Faster Pace of AI

In his fascinating discussion, Talwar pointed to a recent development with Google, using DeepMind, its artificial intelligence (AI) computer, and playing Go — one of the most complicated games known to man. In this scenario, Google did not program the computer, only gave it rules of the game.

Rohit-Talwar-pic-300x216

In short order, the world Go champion lost 4-to-1 to DeepMind in dominate fashion. While this happened in early 2016, this was not expected to be possible until 2026 — a full decade in the future.

What Talwar was illustrating through the AlphaGo example and countless others is that AI is here and is being used all around us. It is becoming pervasive, embedded, augmented, immersive, and connected to a multi-sensory network.

There were a host of various legal sector applications he cited as occurring now, such as those in areas such as:

  • Automation of Legal tasks and Processes — Firms have developed a computer program that can sift through government regulatory registers to check client names for banks, processing thousands of names overnight. Others have created an automated personal injury claim case assessment program.
  • Decision Support and Outcome Prediction — This includes advancement in document review in M&A, that extracts and analyzes key contract provisions and provides rapid summary and analysis; or analyzes entire briefs to find potential missing points of law, or alternative arguments not cited; and premonition programs can predict which lawyers win with which case types and which judges.
  • Creation of New Product and Service Offerings — This includes development of online document generation for startup formation; online education impact analysis; and online chatbots that can advise on privacy law and generating client-specific compliance policy in real-time.
  • Process Design and Matter Management — Firms have developed automated generation of process flows and project plans; real-time impact assessment of process changes on timeframes, resources and costs; and come up with suggested narratives based on how clients react to and prefer to receive information
  • Practice Management — This involves benchmarking across practice areas for comparable tasks from document production through to completion of key stages in a matter; identifying potential human resource challenges using social media sentiment analysis of comments; and providing dynamic modelling of alternative billing approaches and matter-team formation based on personal characteristics.
  • In-house Legal Applications — Some firms have developed a lawyer advisory app that can, for example, create an ordering of corporate contract negotiations; other tech entities have created apps or programs that can streamline and standardize regulated superannuation funds’ breach assessment processes, and that can help financial institutions meet requirements, determine applicable regulations in terms of situations concerning money laundering, liquidity risk and financial crimes.

The Coming Blockchain Revolution

Over the next several years Talwar said that he believes blockchain technology will have a monumental impact on law firms, providing firms with the ability to store information in a secure distributed ledger. In fact, Goldman Sachs estimates a cost saving of $4 billion annually on its legal bill by moving real estate titles to distributed ledgers that use blockchain technology.

Talwar pointed out that law firms have a huge potential upside with all of the technology that is emerging. However, he warned, if a firm does not adapt and become agile it will be very difficult for it to keep up with the pace of change that will be occurring, and ultimately its intransigence will make it difficult for the firm to win business.

In the second phase, being tested right now, the Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) will execute contracts free of human intervention; and in the future, we’ll reach Algocracy, a full automation of the law.

In this scenario, we would have a complete rewriting of the law that would be embedded in software. This would allow for automatic fines, standardized open source legal documents and automated judgments. For example, if someone stole a candy bar from a convenience store, their own body camera would catch them and automatically impose a fine on that person. A payment would be removed directly from their bank account, and would be executed without human intervention.

Not surprisingly, Talwar pointed out that law firms have a huge potential upside with all of the technology that is emerging. However, he warned, if a firm does not adapt and become agile it will be very difficult for it to keep up with the pace of change that will be occurring, and ultimately its intransigence will make it difficult for the firm to win business.

The wonderful aspect about this change is that it is all new. Most of these technologies are not governed by law, which creates an incredible opportunity for legal advice because clients have to understand how to handle these new technologies.

Law Firm of the Future – The Trinity of Forces: Infinite Processing Power, Memory, and Machine Learning

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

In ten years, it is predicted that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist1. This forecast originally cited in Fast Company is from a Babson Olin School of Business study.  This notion is nearly incomprehensible, but may have a significant impact on the legal business.

Why is this happening now, and what impact might it have on the law firm?

We are at an extraordinary moment in time with the evolution of technology on three fronts.  The trinity of forces are colliding at once, propelling change with everything around us.

Gordon Moore, an Intel chip scientist, formulated a well renowned technical law.  Moore’s Law states that roughly every 18 to 24 months, the processing power of computers doubles. That is, the ability for a computer to perform calculations is increasing exponentially.  For some perspective, if you were to buy a $1,000 computer in the year 2000, it would have had the processing power of an insect brain. Buy a new computer in 2010 and you would have the processing power of a mouse brain.  Fast-forward to 2024 and the expectation is that a new computer will be as powerful as the human brain.  In 2045, a $1,000 computer purchased from Amazon.com will process as fast as all of humankind.  The implications of this are staggering.

In the second of the three forces, we couple what amounts to unlimited processing power with the advances to storage and memory for computers. In 1965, IBM built a computer with 5MB of storage.  It was as big as a bedroom and cost $120,000. In 2004, a memory chip the size of a fingernail cost $99 and held 128 MB.  Ten years later, we can purchase a 128 GB chip for $99.  This is the hockey stick picture of momentum with exponential growth accelerating rapidly up the graph for both processing power and memory.

The third and last piece of this triumvirate of significant change is programming and algorithms.  We are at a state where computers are beginning to teach themselves.  Machine learning is becoming an increasingly important part of many businesses.  Through an algorithm, a programmer builds a foundation from which the program can learn and continue to adapt and grow.  There are a plethora of examples that are starting to take hold.  IBM Watson has the most buzz right now with its cognitive computing platform.  Uber uses machine learning to price rides, location drop-offs and pickups. Amazon can couple complementary products with your purchase.  In the legal space, WestSearch®, the fundamental algorithm behind WestlawNext®, learns as people conduct research.  It surfaces up the most pertinent content and good law for the researcher.  Other legal examples include e-Discovery where many products utilize predictive analytics to help reduce the number of eyes necessary to review documents.

The blending of these three forces – processing power, memory, and algorithms – is a mixture for infinite growth and transformation at law firms.  The opportunities are immense.  Here are some possible changes afoot as the trifecta take hold over the next 10 years.

  • As predicted that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist because of these forces, law firms will likely mirror this as some who do not adapt and embrace these technologies will struggle to survive
  • In the next 10 years, because of unlimited storage and processing power, most document review will be completely automated and computerized.  No longer will the first years or contract attorneys be reviewing documents for 18 hours a day
  • Workflow solutions will reign over the next five years, but beyond that the trifecta of forces mentioned will push these solutions into complete automation so that drafting documents will be computer generated.  This is actually happening now with 20 percent of Web news articles written by computer
  • We are in an interstitial period with the Cloud.  Currently, security frightens many firms from taking advantage of its scale and low cost.  In the coming years, most firms will move everything they can to some type of Cloud, including private or hybrid
  • Everything will be outsourced at the firm.  Phone systems, HR systems, back office, administrative and technical support, where the portal will be hosted, office tools like Microsoft® Office, and all things technical will likely be moved away from the firm and managed by vendor experts.  This will greatly reduce costs for the firm as they tap into the three forces
  • As a result of the above, most attorneys will work remotely, and law firm office space will be dramatically smaller
  • Big firms will get bigger and the medium may get smaller.  The mediums who adapt will find their niche as a regional player, local generalist, boutique, or litigation specialist
  • The impact on speed and adaptability on new attorneys will begin in law school.  Some schools have already begun a two-year program with the third focused on technology, lawyer tools, and recalibrating how the attorney will work in the new firm

The law firm of 10 years from now will certainly be different from what we have today.  In this extraordinary time, with the evolution of technology and trinity of forces, firms will have to adapt rapidly.  This fundamental shift will be an opportunity for the firm to become more efficient, create new opportunity, and ultimately serve their clients better.

1 John M. Olin School of Business study

ILTACON – “Watson, I Need You!” Augmented Intelligence for Legal

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

If you were to imagine the researching aspect of a law firm of the future, what would that look like? Kyla Moran from the IBM Watson Group led a discussion down the path of what we could expect. In what seemed like a shock to many in the room, Moran described an office similar to today, with one difference: Watson will work in tandem with lawyers, listening to queries and providing natural language feedback with an enhanced ability to understand the tone of the question or conversation. Moran termed this augmented knowledge or intelligence, noting this service will be your personal savant, ever-ready to assist with a wealth of knowledge.

What started as a million dollar investment, IBM Watson now has the ability to process 700 million pages of data in one second. As the system continues to develop, it is likely that in the future many, if not all decisions, will be influenced by cognitive computing.

Moran also spoke about the pivotal moment that shifted the cognitive computing industry. The game show Jeopardy thrust IBM onto center stage with the computer beating the best two players of all time. Moran said that the company learned some valuable lessons from that experience. First was the importance of memory. Watson had a treasure trove of information and metadata, but new in this sphere was the ability to enhance and understand contextual information. Watson could interpret Jeopardy’s tricky language like, “Chicks Can Dig Me,” a category about female archaeologist on the show. Lastly, Watson could see more than black or white, but rather an array of a thousand shades of gray. This important nuance allows the system to rank possible answers rather than a single answer. Ultimately these learnings have allowed augmented intelligence to now aid in human decision making.

While Watson has made much hay outside of legal market, medical, financial and now cooking; where does Moran see it helping law firms?

Moran said that one-third of an associate’s time is typically spent on research with 52 percent of associates conducting a free web search as the first step in their research process. She insinuated that this is one huge area that she expects augmented intelligence assisting. She also mentioned that this will accelerate the vacuums of law where 80 percent of Americans who need legal services are unable to acquire or afford it, while large numbers of lawyers are unable to find clients. This mixture is primed for the use of augmented intelligence to assist.

While the current state of legal adoption of IBM Watson is relatively low, there is no question that such technologies are set to explode over the coming years. With the rapid expansion of both structured and unstructured data, these tools will have to be utilized to better understand the enormous data surrounding legal professionals.

Exponential Growth—The Data Explosion and Resulting Challenges and Opportunities for Law Firms, Part 2

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

Over the course of the next several years I predict that many law firms will begin hiring data scientist. In my previous post Exponential Growth – The Data Explosion and Resulting Challenges and Opportunities for Law Firms, Part 1 I discussed how our current data explosion threatens experts at law firms but could yield vast opportunities. Recently Robin Grosset, Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect at IBM Watson Analytics, described the importance of having a data scientist in your business. Underlining this point, he stated that in the United States there will be three-times the positions available in this field than can be filled.

How firms turn the big data challenge into opportunity

Why should law firms invest in a data scientist? Firms sit atop of massive quantities of very important specialized and typically siloed data. Grosset mentioned that a recent Mckinsey & Company report showed a firm could increase its operating margins by 60% by using the data they have currently. With the exponential growth of data, law firms will need to decipher it into understandable bits so they can make actionable decisions and find opportunity.

How could this be accomplished? In the past we know that eDiscovery practices utilized computer learning and analytics to create efficiency for large cases. As law firms continue to utilize flat fees as they seek out business, they will increasingly need to take advantage of analytics-based tools with a layer of human interaction. The human interaction is a piece that allows you, the expert, to ask simple or insightful questions for which the tool will serve up answers. Those intuitive results rest upon the underlining data which can be drilled into for greater understanding. The core piece to this human-level interaction is Semantic Analysis. In essence it adds meaning to data. That is, it creates data clues like data type, patterns, range density, sample values, and correlations. You essentially have a massive set of rules that are bundled together and sift through the data, eventually learning on its own and creating new interpretations of what lies within the data.

Why would a law firm use this? Business development, client retention, analysis of lawyer productivity, assessing resource allocation and a myriad of other untapped areas will be explored using a data scientist. With the ability to process massive quantities of information and find the white space, real opportunity will be found by those that go down this road. In fact, the analysis that IBM Watson puts forth states that most firms estimate that they only analyze 12% of their data currently and that 88% is left on the on the dark-grained, bamboo-laden law firm floor.

Ultimately, the exponential growth of data is currently creating challenges for some law firms. What will be fascinating over the years ahead is who will seize on this evolving opportunity and how will they approach it.

Exponential Growth – The Data Explosion and Resulting Challenges and Opportunities for Law Firms, Part 1

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

We are currently living in the hockey stick portion of explosive data growth. That is, 90% of data humans amassed has been collected during the past two years. According to IBM Watson, this is gathering speed exponentially such that 2.5 billion gigabytes of new data is generated every day and the majority of this is unstructured. Simply stated, the numbers are massive and the data is not organized—and this impacts all businesses, but increasingly is a challenge to law firms.

True expertise is fading without computer learning tools

Recently I had the opportunity to watch Robin Grosset, Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect at IBM Watson Analytics steer an entertaining and provocative discuss around data analytics. His focus was on how big data can impact expertise and how cognitive analysis or computer learning can meet this massive data challenge and build abundant opportunity.

True human expertise is at a crossroads. No one person can possibly absorb the vast quantity of data that is being produced in various disciplines. Traditionally in the eDiscovery space, firms hired first-years out of law school to review and classify thousands of documents for a case. Now, in many instances, data has ballooned well beyond what a team of attorneys can handle. Expertise is lost among the data. Audio, video, pictures, database information and social media are increasingly in profusion around cases to be analyzed. The ability to be an expert with a complete understanding of a case is nearly impossible now without the proper tools.

The solution to this dilemma of data and expertise is to wrap instruments that interpret and understand this data around the information. With cognitive computing it begins by dealing with the volume, variety and velocity of the data. Once that is understood, the real key is adding a human intuitive interface on top of that massive data-crunching, cloud-processing power. This aspect is the edge of where this field is headed currently. It then allows an expert to unearth the data through analytics and their own analysis. Firms can then sort through the mountain of information to understand and interpret trends and more importantly find white space. Now the expert can reclaim their seat, and from this challenge start to seek out opportunities for their firm.

In the next part of this series I will focus on how law firms can turn the big data challenge into opportunity.

The Next Legal Era: Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing

Posted on by

By Joseph Raczynski

We are on the cusp of a new era in computer technology.  What could possibly connect rapid automated legal decisions; systematized stack ranked medical diagnosis, and never created scrumptious food recipes?  At the IBM Cloud Innovation Forum in Dana Point CA, Mike Rhodin SVP of IBM Watson connected the three with a provocative overview of what our future in legal entails.

Here is some brief history.  The computer is entering its third era.  In the beginning we focused around the computation of numbers called the Tabulation Era.  Simple calculations ruled this phase.  After decades passed we moved into the use of magnetic tapes and programmed storage of information.  The central piece surrounding this period was programming and so is known as the Programmatic Era.  Currently we find ourselves in this phase but edging into the third known as the Learning Systems Era.

Our current era is in a troubled state.  In 2020 all data available will surpass 40 zettabytes (40 trillion GBs).  The slope on a graph which represents this change from today is nearly straight up.  For comparison, in 2009 the entire World Wide Web was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes which is about one half a zettabyte.  Every electronic act, button pushed, video or picture taken, word written, is a magnification of significant proportion.  However, where data storage multiplies is as we create and store meta data and learned connections from the base data.

Why is data exploding?  When Watson competed against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy, IBM gave it a brain (offline hard drive) of all the information they thought was pertinent to win.  Initially they found it was about 10 gigs of information.  However when the engineers extracted the meta data from the 10 gigs using every algorithm imaginable, the storage ballooned 10 times to 100 gigs.  Lastly they applied other computer assisted cognitive learning against the data and the storage grew by 100 times.  This is one reason the amount of data is exploding as we move toward 2020.  The data we create about data is actually more voluminous than the original data set, and the learning’s from that are even greater.  The volume of data is at a tipping point.  We are nearly at capacity to understand it as humans.

Rhodin says we make decisions through four phases.  We observe, interpret, evaluate and then decide.  Watson now has the ability to tap into this same process.  This was made evident when doctors saw Watson on Jeopardy ranking top answers based on evidence and supporting hypotheses.  These data points can help form decisions.

Expertise matters more than ever before and with the amount of data coming online it is increasingly challenging for any one human in a field such as law to have mastery.  Cognitive computing enhances, accelerates and scales human expertise so that the attorney can wrap their head around the patterns and make intelligent decisions.  The attorney has to be especially aware of this as they are presented with much larger volumes of discovery data than ever conceived.

In a very unique example of Watson’s prowess, it digested all of Bon Appetite’s recipes.  The system was trained in underlining chemical combinations thus bringing never tried together favors with very different blends.  It connected the dots on things never created and spit out several recipes.  The food was launched in a food truck at the festival South By Southwest (SXSW).  The truck produced the biggest buzz with lines extending three blocks.  Chef Watson’s cookbook of 100 recipes is coming out in the coming months.

Ultimately what Watson is doing is exploring the whitespace, attempting to connect the dots into what has not been found.  As we are inundated by data, cognitive computing will help experts sift through the data and retain their expertise.  It is clear that this is the future of many industries including the legal sphere.  Watson is in beta trials for medical and life sciences, law enforcement, financial services and legal.