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  • Lawyers Are Drowning in Data. What Can They Do About It? “The ‘Why Lawyers Are Adopting AI Faster Than You’ panel at this year’s Legalweek will examine at how firms can use AI to find the needle in some pretty big data haystacks.” Link.

 

 

 

  • Briefing: China looks to build ‘smart courts’ with AI. “A Shanghai court has adopted an artificial intelligence-enabled assistant to help improve courtroom efficiency and accuracy.” Post.

 

  • This software thinks like a lawyer—so you don’t have to pay one. “A Chicago law firm (Actuate Law) is rolling out a subsidiary that offers clients software designed to mimic their lawyer’s thinking—at a fraction of the price.” “….(I)ntelligent software that walks them through whether they have a legal obligation to report a data breach.” “Although Quointec has no outside funding so far, the partners created the new venture to allow for such investment in the future without violating professional regulations.” Post.

 

  • LawNext Episode 26: Mark Cohen’s Strategies for the Global Legal Marketplace. “On this (hour-long) episode of LawNext, Cohen joins host Bob Ambrogi to talk about a range of topics. They discuss Clearspire and the lessons Cohen learned from that. They also talk about what Cohen sees as the “skills gap” in law and why it is that law schools and law firms are failing to address it. In the fact of a rapidly changing global legal economy, Cohen offers insights on how law firms should adapt.” Post.

 

  • From The Law Society Gazette: Accountants winning in ‘rapidly expanding’ alternative legal services market. “So-called alternative legal service providers – including the Big Four accountants – are growing more quickly than previously predicted and moving up the value chain, research on both sides of the Atlantic reveals today. The new entrants, offering such services as litigation support, legal research and document review with the help of new technology now make up a $10bn (£7.6bn) a year market, the Thomson Reuters study found.”

 

  • Also from The Law Society Gazette: How legaltech can help you compete against larger firms. “Continuing the discussion on the evolution of the legaltech sector and how it could revolutionise the legal industry, Law Society partner and equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs explains how the rise of legaltech is closing the gap between large and small legal firms.” Post.

 

  • I thought the 2019 forecasts were behind us, but here’s an interesting report from CBInsights: Artificial Intelligence Trends. Lots of infographics.

 

  • This lawyer got a gig in Silicon Valley by promising to automate a lot of legal grunt work — now he’s got his own company. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could have associates who could code and automate their own jobs and would make the firm more efficient?” Post.

 

From Artificial Lawyer:

  • New York Bulletin: Data is Not the New Oil + LSBs Are Splitsville. Story here.

 

  • Pew: How Stanford + Suffolk Law Schools Are Improving NLP for A2J. Story here.

 

  • TR: ALSP Market Now $10 Billion-Plus, Law Firms Major Customers. Story here.

 

  • New York Bulletin – AI Workshop + Do We Need an FDA for Algorithms? Story here.

 

  • Australia Launches ALTACon Legal Tech Conference. Story here.

 

  • Legal AI – Its Definition and Its Value to the Legal World. Story here.

 

  • Global Insurer Allianz Launches Injury Claim Automation Tool. Story here.

 

  • ALM – Legal Market Will Split In Two + ALSPs Will Grow – NY Bulletin Extra. Story here.

 

Posts by Law Firms:

  • Alston & Bird: … Teams Up with Georgia State University on Data Analytics. “Alston & Bird and Georgia State University have announced a joint effort to develop broad-based competency among the firm’s attorneys in leveraging data science and analytics to help drive new levels of client service and satisfaction.” Post.

 

  • Andrea Perronace: Techniques for Patenting Blockchain in Europe, the United States, China and Japan. Post.

 

  • Baker Donelson: 90-minute CLE video post: Analyzing the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Legal. (5 ‘Micro-Presentations’.) Post. (Poor audio.)

 

 

 

 

 

  • Baker McKenzie: The Year Ahead – Innovation: A new generation of legal analysis tools is emerging. Post.

 

 

  • Dentons: Chloe A. Snider: Smart Contract Series – Legal Implications For Consideration, Part 1: Definition And Enforceability. Post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Press Releases, Posts and Articles by Vendors:

 

  • Clio releases new client management platform to ‘help lawyers ensure the future success of their business’. Post.

 

  • Allianz to use Artificial Intelligence to deliver a true end-to-end automated solution for Stage 3 injury claims. Post. — and — “Allianz Insurance has launched a new digital platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enable its injury claims handlers to process Ministry of Justice Stage 3 claims at a single click of a button.” Story here.

 

  • Thomson Reuters: Introducing Litigation Analytics. “Unlock data-driven insights on judges, courts, attorneys, law firms, and case types to better develop case strategy and manage client expectations.” Post.

 

  • Relativity Brings Reduced Data Fees, Unlimited Analytics, and a More Flexible Licensing Model to RelativityOne Customers. Post.

 

  • Emerging from Harvard Law/MIT, Evisort AI Tech Company Posted Tremendous Growth in 2018, Announces Upcoming New Product Launch. Post.

 

  • Zero Now Helps Lawyers Bill More Time in Bellefield, Intapp, Carpe Diem and Other Time Entry Tools. Post. — and — Ryan Steadman of Zero: Business as Usual: 5 Law Firm Activities AI will Seamlessly Transform. Post.
  • Legalweek (formerly Legaltech) is just a few days away, so here’s: A Beginner’s Guide To The Biggest Week In Legal Technology.

 

  • “Data & Analytics: Transforming Law Firms” has just been published by ALM Intelligence and LexisNexis. Here’s an executive summary and link to the report.

 

  • Here’s a fresh essay about law firm innovation from  of Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services: Greasing The Gears Of Legal Commerce — Automatic, Systematic, Hydromatic (alt.legal) Innovation. “CLOs indicated that nearly 25 percent of outside counsel fees are “price-insensitive.”

 

  • The Big 4 continue their relentless march into legal. I skip most of these posts, but this one specifically mentions AI: KPMG expands Asia Pacific legal services. “It will also offer technology enabled legal services, using robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies developed globally and in China through the KPMG digital ignition centre.”

 

  • This is an interesting post by Charles P. Edwards of Barnes & Thornburg: The Noisy Business of the Law and Insurance Claims. “…(T)he idea we humans are needed for most decisions is an ‘illusion.'”

 

  • Here’s a good example of a law firm (Amsterdam’s De Brauw) using tech as a differentiating marketing strategy. Hop on board and experience the value of legal tech and project management.

 

  • Bob Ambrogi posted this 47-minute podcast: LawNext Episode 25: Using AI to Enhance Virtual Receptionists, with Smith.ai.

 

  • From Arup Das of Alphaserve Technologies, here’s an interesting discussion of the age-old build vs. buy conundrum: How to Approach Legal Innovation: Options for Every Firm.

 

  • This is a thought-provoking post: Can Deepfakes Pose a Cybersecurity Threat to Legal? ““Deepfakes are real and emerging as an issue but they, like certain types of technology, could emerge very quickly; we talk about this today and it could be a very big deal in six months or it could be nothing,” Reed Smith’s Stegmaier cautioned. “We simply don’t know.””

 

  • This hour-long podcast is from the Lawyerist: “In this episode with Natalie Worsfold, we talk about her law firm’s approach to law practice, and why more firms aren’t following suit. We start by asking Natalie what problem Counter Tax was trying to solve, then explore how they solved it, what their solution does now, and the plans they have to evolve and grow their solution.”

 

  • This is an idea I have been kicking around for a while. Nick Hilborne gives it the thought I believe it’s due: “Reproduction of the legal profession” at risk from automation. “If junior associates are ‘gradually culled’ from law firms as a result of automation, the entire reproduction of the legal profession could be jeopardised….'” And here’s a US write up of the same issue: Junior Lawyers Are Going Extinct And Nobody Knows What To Do About It.

 

  • AI Goes to Court: A Conversation With Lex Machina and Dorsey & Whitney. Post here.

 

From Artificial Lawyer:

  • The Benefits of the LexisNexis LegalTech Accelerator. Post here.
  • EY and Artificial Lawyer Hold Legal Ops + Technology Event.  Post here.
  • Slaughter and May Names 3rd Fast Forward Cohort, Inc. Blockchain Co. Post here.
  • Meet ATJ Bot – The World’s First Legal Aid Voice Assistant. Post here.
  • How to Build Your Business Case For Contract Management – The Juro Guide. Post here.
  • Oz + NZ Professional Services Startup of the Year Award Launched. Post here.
  • Legal AI Co. CourtQuant Predicts Hard Brexit Impact on British Law. Post here.
  • Christian Lang + Former TR Boss, Tom Glocer, Join Reynen Court. Post here.
  • GCs Keen To Embrace Tech Tools + Legal Ops Skills – Survey. Post here. (Note: This story is based on a survey where n=80. Assuming no other methodological problems [big assumption!], this means that in all of the findings each number is well within the margin of sampling error of the statistics above and below it on the graphs.)
  • Meet Fincap Law: A New Tech-Driven Firm For the New Legal Era. Post here.

 

Posts by Law Firms:

 

 

 

 

 

  • Eric A. Klein and Aytan Dahukey of Sheppard Mullin posted: Day 2 Notes From The 2019 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. “We are seeing a lot of healthcare entities starting to focus on precision medicine – artificial intelligence suggesting which oncology drug works best for your specific genetic condition and cancer – but that essentially is a transactional function. And the market really wants a partnering function ” Post here.

 

 

 

  • From Reed Smith: Draft ethics guidelines for trustworthy artificial intelligence published by the European Commission. Post here.

 

 

  • Akin Gump posted: Policymakers Focused on Artificial Intelligence, Write Akin Gump Lawyers in The Journal of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Law.

 

  • Hogan Lovells posted: Litigating intellectual property issues: The impact of AI and machine learning.

 

Press Releases and sponsored posts:

  • Here’s a thorough explanation of Gavelytics: Want Better Litigation Outcomes? Know Your Judges. “…(W)ith Gavelytics, you finally get the quantifiable and reliable judge information you need to customize your litigation strategy and increase your chances of winning.”

 

 

  • Gibson Dunn launches AI and automated systems group. Post here.

 

  • The world’s first virtual lawyer, built for Amazon’s Alexa, tests whether lawyers will be replaced by robots. “Australian legal-technology company Smarter Drafter have announced a prototype virtual lawyer, built on Amazon’s Alexa, that creates legal.” documents instantly, just like a real human lawyer. Here’s the Smart Drafter release. Hype much?? And then there’s this: “No date has been set for the release of the first working Alexa integration.”

 

  • HaystackID Acquires eDiscovery Managed Services Provider eTERA, Release here.

 

  • Legal IT Newswire New Product News… Alphaserve Technologies launch Execution as a Service. Post here.

 

  • I’m including this because I used to work there! Am Law 200 Firm Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie Selects Litera Desktop, Litera Microsystems Full Document Drafting Suite.

 

Blockchain

 

 

 

 

  • From the Baker & Hostetler Energy Blog: New Blockchain Products, an FBI Raid, the $11 Billion Bitcoin Case, Hackers Strike With a 51 Percent Attack and Crypto Tax Analysis. Post here.

 

  • Mark A. Cohen posted this at Forbes: What Does It Say When A Legal Blockchain eBook Has 1.7M Views?

 

  • Here’s a deep dive into the legal services offered by Oath Protocol: The Lay of the Land in Blockchain Dispute Resolution and Governance Designs.

There was very little real AI or blockchain news over the holidays, especially legal-related. But there was a plethora of posts reviewing 2018 and forecasting 2019 and beyond, so that’s the focus of this post. I suggest you skim these titles and then skim through the lists included in most of the posts; you’re likely to find a nugget or two that focus on your interests.

(Note: there have been dozens of similar AI and blockchain posts specific to other industries. Many are at least tangentially related to legal, but I have omitted those to keep this post somewhat manageable. Those include almost every industry you can imagine from maritime to construction and from automotive to marketing. Healthcare leads the pack. Similarly, there have been many country-specific posts and quite a few regarding the international competition to lead in these areas. Some of that is summarized in this, from the Centre for International Governance Innovation: 2018: A Landmark Year for Artificial Intelligence.)

 

First, a bit of real news:

  • A2J has taken a step forward (I think) with SUE THE COLLECTOR. Here’s the (typo-filled) news release: “After partnering with literally dozens of law firms across the United States, Sue The Collector, Inc has helped thousands of Consumers in America turn the tables on Debt Collection companies and help consumers recover millions in damages caused by reckless and illegal debt collectors that violate the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, (FDCPA), The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and RESPA, TILA and SCRA Acts including numerous state laws such as California’s Rosenthal Act. To date, the Lawyers have helped consumers cancel over 1 Billion Dollars in Debt and have recovered millions in fines and settlements.”

 

  • This, from Epstein Becker: Startup Roadshow: AI in Healthcare (FDA Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Used in Healthcare – 2019 Multi-City Tour). (H/T to Rich Westling for the post.)

 

  • From the Reno Gazette Journal, here’s: Driver’s licenses next? How one Nevada county is using blockchain for marriage certificates.

 

  • Giangiacomo Olivi of Dentons posted: : Top Five Issues To Consider. “Datasets processed through AI systems (also “AI Data Lakes”) are becoming increasingly popular, with an exponential increase in potential “use cases.” You will find here below the main legal issues to consider.”

 

  • Streetwise Reports posted: Major Title Companies Adopt Blockchain to Cut Down on Security Breaches.

 

 

  • Just this morning, the NYT posted: Curbs on A.I. Exports? Silicon Valley Fears Losing Its Edge. “The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on artificial intelligence. Some worry they could stunt the industry in the U.S.”

 

  • From The IPKat: Commercial use of image rights: Paris Tribunal boosts models’ and performers’ protection.

 

  • I had never heard of East Coast Polytechnic Institute University in my home state, but it seems University in North Carolina Issues Degrees Using Blockchain. And also from North Carolina, “For students at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, the future is now. An alum has given $2 million to start an artificial intelligence and machine learning program at the public boarding school in Durham.” Story here.

 

  • Sharmeen Shaikh of Khurana and Khurana posted: Is It Possible To Patent Artificial Intelligence? “(AI) is yet to gain compatibility with the patent laws on a global level.”

 

  • This, from American Banker: BankThink Don’t underestimate AI’s risks. “Artificial intelligence technologies have already begun to transform financial services. At the end of 2017, 52% of banks reported making substantial investments in AI and 66% said they planned to do so by the end of 2020. The stakes are enormous — one study found that banks that invest in AI could see their revenue increase by 34% by 2022, while another suggests that AI could cut costs and increase productivity across the industry to the tune of $1 trillion by 2030.”

 

  • The Next Web‘s blog, Hard Fork posted this useful guide: 5 of the best podcasts to get you into cryptocurrency and blockchain.

 

  • From the New York Times, here’s a sobering look at just how big tech is today. Big Tech May Look Troubled, but It’s Just Getting Started.

 

Artificial Intelligence in 2018:

  • One of the best sources of all news re legal innovation is Bob Ambrogi, so here’s Bob’s My Most Popular Posts of 2018. Also from Bob, here’s The 20 Most Important Legal Technology Developments of 2018.

 

  • Another reliable source of the best and latest news is Richard Tromans’ Artificial Lawyer, so here’s Artificial Lawyer Year in Review – 2018 – What a Year! (I agree.)

 

  • Fieldfisher provided this list of 2018’s data protection milestones. 2018 – a year like no other for data protection! Part 3.

 

  • James Vincent posted this: The Verge 2018 tech report card: AI. “A scandal is better than evil that goes unnoticed.”

 

  • New Atlas published: From weapons to works of art: The year in artificial intelligence.

 

  • According to “a panel of experts,” here’s What Mattered in 2018: Industry Insiders Reflect on the Biggest Moments in IP. (Lots of AI and some Blockchain is mentioned.)

 

  • From TechTalks, here’s The biggest artificial intelligence developments of 2018.

 

  • Here’s a useful collection: CMSWire’s Top 10 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Articles of 2018.

 

  • From Pat Lamb and the good folks at Attorney at Work here’s: 2018 InnovAction Award Winners More Than Just the Latest Buzz.

 

  • Here’s How Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google And Microsoft Made 2018 The Year That IT Mattered A Lot.

 

Artificial Intelligence Forecasts:

  • From the always astute Ron Friedmann, here are some thoughts about Overcoming FOMO – The Reality of Legal Tech. Not exactly a forecast, but how to shape your own future (in-house and law firm folks). And here are more thoughts from Ron on how to move ahead: The Long View of Legal Innovation. At the end of the latter post Ron included this link to another excellent post about legal tech innovation, this one from Bill Henderson re Microsoft’s approach.

 

 

  • From Housing Wire, here’s Expert: Regulatory burdens to drive AI replacement of humans. (Ballard Spahr Partner Richard Andreano is interviewed.)

 

  • I did not sign up to receive this survey, so I can’t critique its methodology, but here’s “MarketResearchReports.Biz Announced New Research Study on Report “Artificial Intelligence and RegTech Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2018 – 2026.”

 

  • Rather surprisingly, this post is from Interesting Engineering: AI vs. Lawyers: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and Law. “Leibniz: The First Lawyer to Predict the Use of Machines in Law”

 

  • This, from Barron’s: Artificial Intelligence Is Coming to Disrupt Customer Service — and Sooner Than You Think.

 

  • How about some tabloid click bait? From the UK’s Express, here’s Artificial intelligence: ‘Empathy bots’ with human emotions to be in our homes NEXT YEAR. “NEXT year will see the introduction of robots which have HUMAN emotions and could believe that they have been enslaved, according to leading tech experts.”

 

  • But seriously, from DataQuest, here’s The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in 2019. Sandeep Parikh of EY is interviewed.

 

  • From TNW (The Next Web): Here’s what AI experts think will happen in 2019. Story here.

 

  • From Wired, here’s: In 2019, despite everything, the UK’s AI strategy will bear fruit :The UK plans to spend £1 billion on artificial intelligence. By closing the skills gap, the UK can stay at the forefront of innovation.”

 

  • According to my favorite magazine and some Pew research, many Americans are not very comfortable with where all this is headed.

 

  • Just for fun: ‘Blade Runner’ predicted what life would be like in 2019. Here’s what the movie got right — and wrong. Here’s another take on Blade Runner’s prescience. And from NBC, here’s: 19 bold predictions for science and technology in 2019 (lots of smart folks and their predictions).

 

Blockchain in 2018:

  • Here are some blockchain sports cards for you: CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2018.

 

Blockchain Forecasts:

  • This, from Olga V. Mack: How To Innovate Using Blockchain Within The Legal Field And Other Industries? I like her focus on the relationship between the practice and business of law.

 

  • FinExtra posted: Some blockchain predictions for 2019. (If you only read one overview of what’s coming for blockchain generally, this would be a good choice.)

 

  • Crypto site Smartereum posted: 2019 May Not Be Marked With A Lot Of Progress In The Blockchain Industry According To Some CIOs, and this: What Will 2019 Bring For Blockchain Technology? and this: Blockchain Technology Will Fulfill Its Purpose By Revolutionizing The World In 2019.

 

  • CoinDesk posted: 2019: The Year We Might (Finally) See Better Blockchain UX? And also from CoinDesk, we have: 2019: The Year Blockchain Begins Finance’s Great Unbundling.

 

  • CoinTelegraph posted: Too Soon for Blockchain Benefits in 2019, Says UPS Executive. “Senior executives at United Airlines (UA) and logistics giant UPS think 2019 will not be the year blockchain goes mainstream, the Wall Street Journal reported on Dec. 28.”

 

  • Digital Journal posted: Will 2019 finally see the rise of blockchain?

 

Looking back and ahead, and/or AI and Blockchain:

  • From Zach Abramowitz, here’s Notes From A Legal Binge (Part II). “Legal technology has gone from something that no one cared about to one of the industry’s most important sectors — and the conversation continues to mature.”

 

  • This, from Information Age: Artificial intelligence: What changed in 2018 and what to expect in 2019. “In the artificial intelligence and machine learning space, 2019 will see the rise of the intelligent application.”

 

  • From Hacker Noon, here’s OpenText: Convergence of blockchain, IoT & AI will lay out the path for supply chain autonomy.

 

  • Law.com has pulled together several futurist articles here in: Business, Tech and Regulation: What’s Ahead for the Legal Industry in 2019.

 

  • TechTarget interviewed several IT professionals as the basis for this post: Technology trends 2019: Expect AI, blockchain uncertainty.
  • If even you’re casually interested in AI, check out this list of the biggest AI milestones achieved in 2018. E.g., from Microsoft: “Hitting human parity in a machine translation task is a dream that all of us have had. We just didn’t realize we’d be able to hit it so soon.”

 

  • And this isn’t specifically legal-related, but it’s interesting: CES 2019 Trends To Watch – 5 Predictions Everyone Should Read.

 

  • Even if you’re not particularly interested in China or the US-China AI rivalry, this article is a good look at cutting edge innovation in AI. AI Domination: The Zero-Sum Game Between The U.S. and China.

 

  • In this post from Legal IT Insider, “12 IT leaders tell us about their achievements, challenges and priorities for the year ahead.” There was quite a bit of AI in 2018 and in their forecasts. For instance, from Clive Knott of Howard Kennedy, “Our most significant development has been the first real use of AI technology in the business, which has significantly reduced the time taken to analyse source documents and produce specific reports.

 

  • And here’s LegalWeek with seven of the same: Cutting through the hype: predictions for innovation in law in 2019. “The Big Four broke cover and started to talk more openly about their ambitions in the legal sector.”

 

  • From MyShingle.com, here are some interesting thoughts re the Tax Implications of Productizing Legal Services. “…(W)hen lawyers convert traditional legal services into hard-copy books or digital products or apps or chatbots because many states subject digital products and/or a software-as-a-service  (e.g., assessment tools like this product ) to state sales taxes.”

 

  • Here’s a good explanation of what’s going on (and coming ) in use of crypto-technologies in real estate. Blockchain’s real estate break.

 

  • In this interesting post, “Gopi K, SVP at Infosys, explores the future of blockchain in 2019.” He presents his four areas of expected greatest growth and explains the state of regulatory affairs in several key countries. This post is very relevant to law.

 

Law Firm Posts/Content

  • “OpenText™ announced that leading international law firm Pillsbury … will be the first law firm to deploy OpenText Magellan, OpenText’s AI-enabled analytics platform.” More here.

 

  • From “…Dentons TMT Bites, the newsletter of Dentons’ Italian Intellectual Property & Technology group. This month we will deal with Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) from IP to privacy and contracts.” Ten December posts are included here, along with a 1-minute video intro.

 

  • Also from Dentons (Saverio Cavalcanti and Giangiacomo Olivi), “With this article, we will address some legal issues arising from contracts featuring AI-based services/products.” It’s a pretty deep dive.

 

 

 

  • From Shearman & Sterling, here’s the longest title of a post I have seen in a while: District Of New Jersey Denies Motion To Dismiss Class Action Against Blockchain-Based Company, Finding That Plaintiff Adequately Pled Defendants’ Initial Coin Offering Constituted The Offer And Sale Of Unregistered Securities.
  • Will an A.I. Ever Become Sentient? “The quest for artificial intelligence could yield something that not only out-thinks humanity but can also feel like us.” Interesting (long) post here.

 

  • Also from Medium: Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness and the Self. This one too is interesting but rather long.

 

  • Capital One AI chief sees path to explainable AI. “Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov, head of artificial intelligence work at card issuer Capital One Financial, disputes the notion deep learning forms of machine learning are “black boxes,” and insists sensitive matters such as decisions to assign credit can be made ‘much more interpretable’.” Story from ZDNet here.

 

  • Uber is getting back into the autonomous vehicle game. Coverage here and here.

 

  • Meanwhile, Kia is looking past vehicle autonomy to reading the driver’s state-of-mind: CES 2019: Kia prepares for post-autonomous driving era with AI-based real-time emotion recognition technology. Coverage here.

 

  • This 45-minute podcast is from  Bob Ambrogi: LawNext Episode 23: Dan Rodriguez on Innovating Law and Legal Education.

 

  • Here’s another rather lengthy thought piece from Mark A. Cohen: Law Is Lagging Digital Transformation — Why It Matters.

 

  • Google is opening another AI lab, this one at Princeton. Coverage here and here.

 

  • Construction Dive posted: The Dotted Line: Mitigating the risks of technology. “It’s finally happening. Robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other cutting-edge technology that has empowered a number of industries has undeniably made its way to construction sites. But with new tools come new risks and new ways to manage those risks.”

 

  • Google posted this update. If you’re generally following AI, it’s worth your time. “Six months ago we announced Google’s AI Principles, which guide the ethical development and use of AI in our research and products. As a complement to the Principles, we also posted our Responsible AI Practices, a set of quarterly-updated technical recommendations and results to share with the wider AI ecosystem. Since then we’ve put in place additional initiatives and processes to ensure we live up to the Principles in practice.” The text of the post isn’t what matters here, it’s the several links that provide what I consider best practices.

 

  • Jason Tashea of the ABA Journal posted: California imposes new regulations on ‘internet of things’ devices. “…(M)anufacturers of connected devices will have to include ‘reasonable security’ features to protect stored or transmitted information from ‘unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure’.” More coverage of how California’s new data privacy law could change how companies do business in the Golden State here.

 

  • This is also from Jason Tashea at the ABA Journal: Access-to-justice gap? It’s the economy. “In November, the ABA published Formal Opinion 484. From the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, the opinion approves of some forms of attorney fee financing, believing that they can help close the access-to-justice gap, defined as those who need but can’t attain legal support.”

 

  • This vendor (VerbIT) is new to me. “A VerbIT transcription process starts with an adaptive AI engine that automatically transcribes content at very high accuracy, regardless of subject matter or accent. A sophisticated algorithm distributes each file through 2-layers of human transcribers within seconds, and checks for congruence, localized spelling and other common inaccuracies. The entire process is extremely fast, and yields +99% accuracy.”

 

Law Firm Posts

 

  • From Ropes & Gray: Podcast: Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Considerations. Sixteen-minute discussion of AI-driven technologies here.

 

 

  • How Fenwick Labs‘ Growth Is a Microcosm of Legal Tech’s Evolution. Post here.

 

 

 

  • This, is from Bruce Stachenfeld of Duval & Stachenfeld: Artificial Intelligence: Is It Really A Threat To Us Lawyers? “(S)omeday AI may have an impact on our profession that is more than automating drudge business, but in my view not yet, and not for a long while.”

 

  • Stewart A. Baker of Steptoe & Johnson LLP posted: The Cyberlaw Law Podcast: Blockchain Takes Over The Podcast. It’s a summary of this hour-long podcast.

 

 

  • Today’s release of the 2018 Blickstein Group Law Department Operations Survey Report reveals law departments are taking advantage of #newlaw options. Post here. I would evaluate the survey’s methodology, but to download the report one must agree to “you are opting in to receive Above the Law Sponsored Messages,” and I won’t.

 

Press Releases/Vendor Articles

  • Seal Software releases most comprehensive contract analytics platform for banks and financial services firms. Release here.

 

 

  • DFIN Elevates Artificial Intelligence Platform with Acquisition of eBrevia. Post here.

 

  • “Ascertus Limited has achieved over 100% business growth in 2018, including head count and revenue. This growth has come equally from existing client retention and new business, which has been driven primarily by increasing interest in iManage Work cloud deployments as well as BusyLamp legal spend management implementations.” Post here.

 

  • Dean Sonderegger of Wolters Kluwer posted: New Year’s Resolutions For Legal Tech. “We’ve covered several different use cases for AI in this column — and while the technology holds tremendous potential, we know that there’s no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solution for everyone and every challenge. As we continue to see new offerings enter the market, the professionals who have a clear understanding of their business will ultimately be successful in unlocking the value of these tools and driving innovation within their organizations.”

 

From Artificial Lawyer

  • The eBrevia/Donnelley Merger, Start of A Legal AI Consolidation Wave? Post here.

 

  • This is a guest post by Michael Burne, Founder and CEO, Carbon Law Partners. A New Year’s Evolution: Is the Traditional Law Firm Model Finished…? “Are traditional firms a busted flush? Well, if by traditional we mean ‘unwaveringly wedded to a construct in the face of rapid change’ – then yes. If we mean ‘a broad adherence to values and a purpose driven organisation’ – then no.”

 

  • 2019 Legal Tech Predictions from the Market. Post here. Leaders of vendors are a few law firms make their predictions.

 

  • This look back is especially blockchain-focused. Christmas News Stocking from Artificial Lawyer.

 

  • Artificial Lawyer Year in Review – 2018 – What a Year! Post here.

 

Blockchain

  • This is a good, brief overview by Thomson Reuters Legal: Blockchain and Its Implications within Legal.

 

  • “The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) announced Tuesday that it has launched a new industry specification group for blockchain.” Post here.

 

  • “Earlier this month, Malta held its blockchain conference, DELTA Summit, attracting more than 3,500 industry experts and government officials. The Summit operates as a platform for investors and experts to share their experience and opinions, specifically on the controversially debated issue of regulation, with fellow entrepreneurs and investors of all ages.” LOTS of topics are covered in this post.

 

AI and Blockchain Prognostications and Looking Back (also see Artificial Lawyer above)

  • From Health IT Security: Blockchain, HIPAA Regulation Lead Top 10 Stories of 2018. “(T)o get a sense of the topics that matter most to executive and clinical leadership, HealthITSecurity.com compiled the top stories from 2018. Here are the most read stories of 2019, leading down to the most popular article.”

 

  • This, from Medium: 2018 in Review: 10 AI Failures. Several are law-related.

 

  • Team Ripple posted this rather technical look back: 2018: The Year of Breakthroughs in Blockchain.

 

  • From iapp: Top 10 Privacy Perspectives of 2018.

 

  • The Big Four’s Big Year: Expansion, Immigration and Evaluation. “Deloitte, KPMG, EY and PwC all made moves in 2018 aimed at building their law practices.” You really should read this summary. It includes coverage of law firms hiring from the Big 4!

 

  • This is by Frank Ready of ALM: Blockchain Made Big Strides in the Legal Services Market During 2018.

 

  • Market intelligence firm Tractica posted: Artificial Intelligence Deployments Have Expanded to Include 258 Unique Use Cases Across Enterprise, Consumer, and Government Markets. “Annual Artificial Intelligence Software Revenue Will Total $8.1 Billion Worldwide in 2018.”

 

  • This commentary is from Information Week: Predictions for Artificial Intelligence in 2019. I found these especially interesting.

 

  • 5 Legal Tech Trends to Watch in 2019. This post is from Sysero.

 

  • From Rachel Wolfson, Blockchain And Crypto Leaders Share Their 2019 Industry Predictions. This post isn’t very long and it’s quite interesting.

 

  • This one is from ComputerWorld: Blockchain in 2019 and beyond: 5 predictions. “After a year where cryptocurrencies lost 80% of their value, and the hype around blockchain as a panacea for business transaction problems has cooled, 2019 will be a year of building real-world solutions.”

 

  • Crypterium posted this look ahead: 4 Major Blockchain Trends to Watch for in 2019. It’s short and straightforward.

 

  • IBM Artificial Intelligence Chief Shares His Predictions For 2019. 4-minute video here. Interesting thoughts re progress toward General AI.

 

  • Enough Hype Already: Inside Legal’s (Over?) Excitement with AI. “While many in the legal industry still over hype AI technology, some are beginning to separate fact from fiction. But the hype hasn’t been all bad—or good—for the legal market.” The post by Rhys Dipshan is here.

 

  • Covington’s Thomas Parisi posted: AI Update: FCC Hosts Inaugural Forum on Artificial Intelligence. “Chairman Pai made clear in his opening remarks that the purpose of the forum was not to initiate AI regulation at the FCC. He stated: “It’s important to note that this event is about discussion and demonstration.”

 

  • Anna Cope and Melanie Lane of CMS wrote: Disciplinaries and Performance Management: Artificial Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence. The article addresses, “AI can help to remove both conscious and unconscious bias in decision-making and to ensure consistency of approach. However, will it ever be acceptable culturally for a machine to decide to fire an employee? Where should the line be drawn when important decisions need to be made about employees’ performance or disciplinary matters? Is the human element still important in this process?”

 

  • Cadwalader’s Steven Lofchie posted: Agencies Urge Banks To Pursue AML (Anti-Money Laundering) Compliance Innovation. “In a joint statement, the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, FinCEN, the National Credit Union Administration and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “agencies”) stated that innovation – including the use of artificial intelligence, digital identity technologies and internal financial intelligence units – has the potential to augment banks’ programs for risk identification, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity reporting.”

 

  • In this post, Chris Cook, Katherine Bravo, KC Halm and Amy Mushahwar of Davis Wright Tremaine summarize the FTC’s hearings on Competition and Consumer protection (a month ago). FTC Hearings Exploring Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Predictive Analytics Focus on Notions of Fairness, Transparency and Ethical Uses.

 

  • Here’s a complete seminar from Dentons. It’s their eighth annual CPD Bootcamp. Chasing Shiny Objects: A Practical Guide To Managing The Challenges Of Transformative Technologies. “The session covered the following: Things to consider before acquiring a transformative technology: how much is real and how much is hype? And how do you know? How select transformative technologies create unexpected privacy and other compliance challenges and ways organizations can address them. Steps organizations can take to manage common risk and liability issues, including via contracts.”

 

  • And this from Dentons Italy’s Giangiacomo Olivi: AI And Drones, A Love Affair (Part I). “One of the main innovative characteristics of drones is their capability to collect and process great amounts of data, including personal data, which is often difficult to manage. This implies that the future usage of drones will be increasingly linked to data analytics and AI patterns and algorithms.”

 

  • “Microsoft Corp. called for new legislation to govern artificial intelligence software for recognizing faces, advocating for human review and oversight of the technology in critical cases.” Details here.

 

 

  • K&L Gates has posted Volume 39 of its Blockchain Energizer Energy Alert, this time summarizing three recent developments.

 

  • More on AML Reform: Artificial Intelligence, Beneficial Ownership and Real Estate from Ballard Spahr. “…(T)he OCC believes that ‘[n]ew technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning offer banks opportunities to better manage their costs and increase the ability of their monitoring systems to identify suspicious activity, while reducing the number of false positive alerts and investigations’.” This in-depth post includes this link to Part One.

 

  • Sameer Gokhale of Oblon, McClelland asks is the Pendulum Swinging Back In AI Direction? “(M)ost inventions in AI will not be directed to a magical robot or the self-driving car. Instead, a lot of inventions are directed to the building blocks of AI, such as deep learning and machine learning algorithms along with data collection techniques which are vital to train the AI software.” “If the USPTO director can guide the examining corp to take a patent owner-friendly approach toward inventive algorithms related to AI, then it will help swing the pendulum of patentable subject matter toward a place that is in harmony with the current state of technology.” Article from Intellectual Property Magazine here.

 

  • Suebsiri Taweepon and Pimpisa Ardborirak of Tilleke Gibbins posted: Challenges of Future Intellectual Property Issues for Artificial Intelligence. “…(W)ould the software developer(s) of an AI be entitled to the work created by that AI? And if the user of the AI continually inputs new sources of information for the AI to learn, resulting in newly created IP, would the user be entitled to own the created IP?”

 

  • This interesting post warns of possible negative unintended consequences of cheap “lawtech” A2J such as, “the silencing of #MeToo activists with an avalanche of libel lawsuits; honest tradesmen ripped off by an automatic lawsuit over every invoice; online bullies spinning up endless court cases against their enemies in order to intimidate them into submission; patent trolls automating their hunt for genuinely innovative companies to exploit”.”

 

  • Meanwhile, here’s more progress on the A2J front: Chatbot to help renters released today. (From New Zealand.)

 

  • Peter Krakaur of UnitedLex posted this overview of legal technologies. It includes a nice summary chart. Planning Your Next Legal IT Strategy Discussion: A Service Delivery Framework (Part I).

 

  • Columbia University’s AI Business Course Studies Legal Tech Startup (Evisort). “…(L)egal technology offers a prime example of using tech experts and industry experts—in this case lawyers—in the development of a needed business tool.” Coverage here.

 

From Artificial Lawyer:

– “Big Tech company, Microsoft, is to broaden the appeal of its NLP and machine learning tools for doc review as part of a project to bring its Azure Cognitive Service capabilities into the Power BI platform for business level analysis and data visualisations. The service will open for public preview from March 2019.” Post here.

– HighQ Integrates With Legal AI Co. LEVERTON + Launches V. 5.0. Post here.

– “Smart contract pioneer, OpenLaw, and oracle platform Rhombus, have joined forces to build derivatives smart contracts, as part of a project to see if their tech can be used in the $500 trillion market for handling derivatives trades.” Post here.

– Relativity Develops ‘Pre-Crime’ Abilities With Trace App at ING Bank. Post here.

 

  • Press release from Littler: Littler Hosts Roundtable of Industry Leaders to Discuss Impact of Automation Technologies. It’s an interesting summary of the event and includes a link to Littler’s recent TIDE (Technology-Induced Displacement of Employees) report. Oh heck, why not just include that link here and save you a click?

 

  • Press release: Elevate Acquires Sumati, Expanding Capabilities and Scale in Contract Lifecycle Management Support.

 

  • Press release: XDD Acquires Leading AI Automation Software Company, Esquify, Further Optimizing the Company’s Managed Review Service Offering.

 

  • Press release: Successfully Migrates 10 Terabytes of Litigation Data to Casepoint eDiscovery Cloud.

 

More prognostications:

– Legal Technology – the future of legal services from Dan Bindman. Post here.

– Moving Beyond Smart Contracts: What Are The Next Generations Of Blockchain Use Cases? Post here.

– 2019 will be the year of artificial intelligence. Post here from Damien Willis.

– This, from Information Age: Artificial intelligence for the lawyer – transforming the legal industry.

– 5 Artificial Intelligence Trends To Watch Out For In 2019. This is a bit technical, but interesting.

– Tech predictions from The Economist in 2019: Facial recognition to AI regulation. “…Major League Baseball will start allowing fans to validate their tickets and enter stadiums via a scan of their face, rather than a paper stub. Singapore’s newest megamall will use the technology to track shoppers and recommend deals to them. Tokyo will spend the year installing facial-recognition systems in preparation for the Olympics in 2020, when it will use the technology to make sure that only authorised persons enter secure areas.” More here.

– If those forecasts aren’t enough for you, how about: 120 AI Predictions For 2019. I did not verify the count or even read them all, but 120 feels about right. Here they are.

 

Blockchain

  • This, from Scott H. Kimpel of Hunton. Blockchain Legal Source: Mining Cryptocurrency Under Federal Election Law. “The acting general counsel of the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) recently published for public comment a draft advisory opinion under the Federal Election Campaign Act and related FEC regulations regarding mining cryptocurrencies for the benefit of political committees.”

 

  • Seven EU States Sign Declaration to Promote Blockchain Use. “…(T)he document cites “education, transport, mobility, shipping, Land Registry, customs, company registry, and healthcare” as services which can be “transformed” by this technology. The group also cites blockchain tech’s use for protecting citizens’ privacy and making bureaucratic procedures more efficient.” More here.

 

 

  • James Marshall, Deals Partner at PwC posted: How blockchain could upend M&A and other deals. “As a tamper-proof shared ledger that can automatically record and verify transactions, blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) could vastly change how investors value, negotiate and execute deals.”

 

  • From Legal Theory Bookworm, this review of the recent book, Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code by Primavera De Filippi & Aaron Wright. “De Filippi and Wright welcome the new possibilities inherent in blockchains. But as Blockchain and the Law makes clear, the technology cannot be harnessed productively without new rules and new approaches to legal thinking.”

–

  • Here’s Bob Ambroji’s take on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ entry into A2J: A Potentially Major Lifeline For Low-Income Legal Tech And A2J. Bob discusses how Pew will attack several specific A2J obstacles. “Pew’s express commitment to increase access to free online legal tools and to develop new platforms to help people interact with the courts is a lifeline the justice system badly needs.”

 

  • Marks&Clerk’s Graham McGlashan posted: UK: Intellectual Property’s Vital Role In Healthcare’s AI-Driven Future. “…(A)geing populations and complicated comorbidities continue to put pressure on healthcare budgets, … the potential rewards for those devising the innovations that overcome those challenges can be significant and protecting innovation in this space with intellectual property (IP) will be vital.”

 

  • This piece from Legal Futures (High Court judge: ethical and legal framework for AI “imperative”) discusses several views concerning AI regulation in the UK, one reason for which being, “…the impact of humans getting things wrong was ‘unlikely to be catastrophic’, while AI failures could have a much bigger impact.”

 

  • Former FTC commissioner and now partner at Covington, Terrell McSweeny posted: Competitive Edge: Antitrust enforcers need reinforcements to keep pace with algorithms, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. “The Federal Trade Commission should consider creating an independent and fully staffed office for the chief technologist or even a Bureau of Technology to enhance its required technological expertise and support its competition mission.”

 

  • Here’s a post from the ACC with recommendations from Stephanie Corey for in-house teams; these are also relevant to law firms: 5 Steps to Metrics: Building a Data-Driven Legal Department. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew!” she warns. “Start small, because going through all these steps is hard and it takes time.” She adds, “A few meaningful metrics is better than 25 metrics that are used for nothing. Change them if they need to change, and stop if they’re not being used. Metrics should evolve with your changing department, and at the end of the day will show all the great progress you and your team have made.”

 

  • Speaking of in-house legal departments, Altman Weil’s 2018 Chief Legal Officer Survey has been released. (Link to download here.) To me, the most interesting thing about it is that though “data” is mentioned dozens of times, “blockchain” and “artificial intelligence” never appear. Not once.

 

  • In this post from Above the Law, Thomson Reuters’ Joe Borstein interviews LegalMation founder James Lee. It’s a deep dive into the product’s genesis, and also discusses applications. “…LegalMation uses machine learning to automatically draft responsive litigation documents such as answers, responses, and interrogatories (which would take hours for a junior associate). For example, within moments of uploading your opposition’s complaint, you will have a competent draft response, which goes so far as to pull out key quotations from the complaint and question their basis in fact….”

 

  • In this post from Information Age (The legal implications of ‘creative’, artificial intelligent robots), Bertrand Liard of White & Case, “discusses artificial intelligence in the context of copyright, patents and existing IP rights.”

 

  • As I have reported several times in the past, “… the GLBC (was formed) to help in developing standards and policies that govern the use of blockchain technology in the business of law.” According to this release from K&L Gates, they’ve signed up too.

 

  • From Artificial Lawyer: Clause Joins Kaleido, the Platform that Makes Private Blockchains ‘Easy’. “…(I)f your firm has people who can get their heads around the mass of jargon and understand some of the technical aspects, then perhaps this could really speed things up and get people over the line into real, working uses of the tech, rather than just pilots.”
  • From Jim Baker via Lawfare: Artificial Intelligence – A Counterintelligence Perspective: Part I. “…AI and the entire technological ecosystem in which it functions are highly valuable to private-sector organizations and nation-states. That means that nations will try to identify, steal, and corrupt or otherwise counteract the AI and related assets of others, and will use AI against each other in pursuit of their own national interests. And that presents the United States and its allies with a classic counterintelligence problem in a novel and high-stakes context….” This is a deep dive.

 

  • Lex Machina‘s Josh Becker prepared this look at the “…three primary categories of legal analytics that relate to legal workflows: litigation, regulatory compliance and transactions.”

 

  • To find out how AI is being used in the deal process and how proficient dealmakers need to be in order to successfully implement and evaluate the technology, Mergermarket asked three law firm partners, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management and a vendor, “What other kinds of machine learning or artificial intelligence applications are there to assist in the dealmaking process at present? What sorts of tools can you envision being created in the future?” Here’s what they said.

 

  • Lexology posted this blog post reporting what a few law firms are doing with AI and the benefits/impact they expect.

 

  • Press release: “CPA Global®, the Intellectual Property (IP) services and technology market leader, today announces the acquisition of Filing Analytics and Citation Eagle, two leading IP data and analytics software solutions, from Practice Insight, a wholly owned subsidiary of IPH Ltd.”

 

  • Here’s an interesting spin on the idea of a Smart Contract from William S. Veatch, a partner at Reed Smith, a “Data Contract.” “The essence of the Data Contract is that the terms of the contract are stored in a database at both the Clause Level and the Idea Level.”

And in this post, Artificial Lawyer interviews Reed Smith’s Bryon Bratcher to explore the firm’s tech strategy, including products they are offering to other law firms.

 

  • More about Smart Contracts. Artificial Lawyer reports that “Smart contract company, Clause, has partnered with a leading NFC (near field communication) company to link it to its own self-executing legal contracting technology. The move is in line with some of the earliest work of Clause, which related to picking up signals from the environment that could trigger elements of a smart contract.” Much more here.

 

  • Rob Galaski, Deloitte Global Banking & Capital Marketing Consulting leader, recently said: “AI is rapidly reshaping the attributes necessary to build a successful business in financial services. As AI drives operational efficiency, economies of scale alone will not sustain cost advantages. In the future, financial institutions will be built on scale of data and the ability to leverage that data. Increasingly bifurcated markets are already emerging where data sharing is critical to competitive success and first movers are positioned to distinguish themselves by delivering better advice, constant presence, and curated ecosystems. Firms that lag behind are finding that their old strengths may not keep them as competitive as they once were.” This seems to me completely relevant to law firms and their clients.

 

  • I have posted about the US’ tightening of controls around tech exports including AI. This post from MoFo reports that EU members are doing the same.

 

  • From Artificial Lawyer: LawDroid, has launched a new voice-activated functionality in a joint venture with US attorney Patrick Palace, that is designed to integrate exclusively with Clio’s practice management software. The new system will offer lawyers the ability to use voice commands to:
    • Dictate notes, schedule appointments, and create tasks
    • Have LawDroid Voice read out to you your schedule for the day
    • Populate data into Clio to eliminate data entry duplication.

 

  • Is AI The Great Equalizer For Small Law? According to this post in Above the Law from Casetext’s Jake Heller, “yes”. “…(T)he 85 percent of lawyers at smaller law firms have been adopting, using, and thriving on artificial intelligence technologies. And they have been using AI to level the playing field, diminishing or eliminating what were once the resource and staffing advantages at the bigger law firms.” It’s an interesting argument.

 

  • Holland & Knight posted: FTC Announces Plans to Hold Roundtables on Consumer Protection and Competition Issues – Privacy, Data Security, Big Data and the Use of Artificial Intelligence Figure Prominently. “The FTC designated a total of 11 topic areas it will focus on and included a series of questions that it would like the public to comment on and participate in. Consumer privacy issues along with data security, the use of Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics figure prominently in the list of main topics the FTC has indicated it will review and analyze….”

 

  • Access to Justice: Artificial Lawyer reports that: German expert system, Bryter, is to build consumer-facing legal applications in a partnership with the Humboldt Consumer Law Clinic (HCLC) at the Humboldt University of Berlin. … The project will have a double benefit, in that students will get to know how to use an expert system such as Bryter, while also creating outward-facing applications that may be of use to consumers with legal needs and access to justice challenges.” More here.

 

Blockchain

 

  • In this sponsored post, Steptoe & Johnson PLLC’s Dan Nossa and Kristian White explain: How blockchain technology could alter the real estate business.
  • As I was making an AI presentation earlier this week, I made my usual comments about this history of AI from mythology to Turing to the Dartmouth Conference and up to the present. A bit later I mentioned the news about Google Duplex. Then it clicked. Duplex may have just passed the Turing Test! (Not in terms of general AI, but certainly with narrow/vertical AI.) Judging from this post, it seems I’m not the only one to have made this connection.

 

  • This, from Michael Mills via “Law Practice Today”: Siri, Esq.—The AI Robots are (not) Coming. Michael divides AI into three sorts of knowledge and reasoning: semantic, logical and statistical. He then uses this taxonomy to organize a discussion of today’s use of AI in legal and to take a look into the future. (Spoiler: some legal jobs will be replaced.) Good stuff.

 

  • Jordan Furlong has prepared a very thoughtful piece titled, Thinking Differently about Legal AI. He briefly reviews the post by Michael Mills discussed above, then presents a “new framework” for dividing legal AI tasks into those concerned with “volume costs” versus those dealing with “scarcity costs.” It’s an interesting approach.

 

  • Here’s more such thinking about AI in legal from HighQ’s Andy Neill: Are robot lawyers the future?

 

  • From Artificial Lawyer: CLM Co. Apttus Partners with Legal AI Pioneer Kira Systems. “Apttus has all the legal data that clients send to it, Kira has the ability to really do something special with that legal data that is of value to the clients. In short, this makes a lot of sense.”

 

  • From Cooley: AI’ll be back… EC strategy paper on AI targets liability and safety laws for further review. “The EC’s paper recommends further steps to prepare for the arrival of AI and ensure European leadership in the technology.”

 

 

  • India is trying to catch up with the US and China in AI. Here’s how, why and in what sectors. But, as this article shows, China is not about to be left behind.

 

  • At the CLOC conference in London this Tuesday, opening speaker Richard Susskind remarked that AI’s “short-term predictions overstate the impact. However, in the long term, by the late 2020s or 2030s, it is hard to avoid the the conclusion that this isn’t going to replace fundamental parts of legal services.” Among his other provocative statements was: ““In-house lawyers have tolerated law firms’ old-fashioned ways of working. Clients don’t want just professionals; they want the outcomes they bring, and different ways of delivering them.” ”CLOC is a collective voice, and in-house lawyers can reconceptualise how legal services are delivered. The future of legal services is within the grasp of CLOC.”

 

  • Seattle University Law School to host Conference on Artificial Intelligence — includes panel on Robotic Speech. The panels look quite interesting, but if they’re going to be taken seriously re AI, they should learn how to spell “Siri.”

Be sure to have Alexa, or Echo, or Seri, or your Google Mini save the date for an important upcoming conference on artificial intelligence. On Saturday, February 17, 2018, from 9 am to 5 pm, Seattle University Law School will host a conference titled: Singularity: Artificial Intelligence & the Law.

 

  • Hogan Lovells has published “Two Steps Forward and a Step Back: Global Intellectual Property Outlook 2018.” Much of the content is relevant to AI. The specifics about AI are on page 20.

 

  • From attorneys at Butler Snow:

Dr. A.I.: The Evolution of the Use and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence in Medical Practice and Drug Development – Pro Te: Solutio Fall 2017, by Caroline L. Eley

Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare – Pro Te: Solutio Fall 2017, by Paul S. Rosenblatt

Using Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery – Pro Te: Solutio Fall 2017, by Hollie A. Smith

  • More from the international race among governments to lead in AI: While in the US, the government is generally leaving serious investment to corporations, China is investing heavily as AI is a clear governmental imperative. UK Prime Minister Theresa May “says she wants the UK to lead the world in deciding how artificial intelligence can be deployed in a safe and ethical manner.”

 

  • Quite a bit has been written about how AI is using “adversarial networks” to advance. This piece from Scientific American is the best explanation of that process I’ve seen.

 

  • Singapore Management University, has launched an AI track in their Master of IT program.

 

  • Just for the hardcore AI tech Geeks: here in Tennessee, using Titan Cray XK7, the most powerful supercomputer in the U.S. for open science, ORNL developers thanks to the machine’s 18,600+ graphic processing units (GPUs), a type of computer hardware that involves massive amounts of matrix multiplications and one that’s well-suited to deep learning, were able to use MENNDL as a tool for testing and training thousands of potential neural networks simultaneously on unique science problems. Better yet, research showed that these auto-generated nets could be produced in a matter of hours as opposed to months using AI software developed by top-notch data scientists.