Don’t miss this excellent compendium by
For more than two years I’ve been writing that systems such as Wordsmith (from Automated Insights) can do a very good job of drafting law firm ‘content marketing’ materials such as client alerts. Here’s some solid (frightening?) evidence of how far such systems have progressed. From The Guardian: “AI can write just like me. Brace for the robot apocalypse.” More about this tech here.
Major (and heavily covered) AI news from the US government last week:
- Pentagon outlines its first artificial intelligence strategy. Coverage here.
- White House Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Is Accelerating America’s Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. Official release here. Other coverage here and here. And here’s a legal spin from Ballard Spahr, here from Gibson Dunn and here from Reed Smith.
- There’s quite a bit more news about AI, blockchain and other and tech in America (national and city news) in this weekly roundup from IP Watchdog. IP and Innovation on Capitol Hill: Week of February 11.
Harvard Business Review: AI Needs to Become Less Elitist. “The best thing the technology community can do to help is to debunk the notion that only people who know how to code can work with AI.” Post.
This piece is not legal AI per se, but is something lawyers should read: How to tell patients AI is part of their care. Three important situations are discussed.
- Luxembourg Passes Blockchain Framework Bill Into Law. “The new law aims provide financial market participants with more transparency and legal certainty in regard to the circulation of securities with blockchain technology. The bill is also geared to make the transfer of securities more efficient by reducing the number of intermediaries.” Post.
From and LawNext, here’s an interesting interview with Cicso’s Mark Chandler about law department innovation. (IMHO, the best content starts at about the 12-minute mark.)
- EDRM At Duke Law School Releases TAR Guidelines. “Demystifying the technology assisted review process and providing some guidance on how it can be applied to document review in discovery.” “The difference between manual human review and TAR — and ultimately, the benefit to the legal profession and clients — is that machine learning programs are capable of making relevancy judgments much more quickly and consistently than humans.” Post.
I guess this is good news: Vatican, Microsoft team up on artificial intelligence ethics. More coverage here.
- More law firms should target AI and blockchain with industry group initiatives. One reason is: Venture Capital Funding For Artificial Intelligence Startups Hit Record High In 2018. Post.
This five-minute read is worth your time: Gartner Debunks Five Artificial Intelligence Misconceptions.
- From the UK: A.I. Judges: The Future of Justice Hangs in the Balance. “Automation is creeping into the courtroom, and it’s going to change the way we think about the law.” Post.
And here’s a similar development in Singapore: How will the judge decide? Law firms look to big data. Post.
- This is an old (2017) academic piece from Germany, but may be of interest to some: International Law and Artificial Intelligence.
- This survey only had 72 respondents, but the results may be directionally interesting if statistically imprecise: 2019 Survey of Law Library Use of Artificial Intelligence – 40% of Law Firms Sampled were Using AI Tools to Predict Money Awards of Damages.
- Here’s a very useful overview of: 8 Thought-Provoking Cases Of NLP And Text Mining Use In Business.
Herbert Smith Freehills has launched a new initiative that will allow its global staff to spend up to 10 days per-year working on “innovation projects.” Post.
- Legal Analytics Market Expected to Reach $1,858.9 Million by 2022. “The legal analytics market is projected to grow from an estimated USD 451.1 Million in 2017 to USD 1,858.9 Million by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.7% during the forecast period.” MUCH more in this 111-page report. (It cracks me up when forecasts like this show projections to five or six significant figures. “$1.9 billion” would have been plenty precise.)
From Australia’s Legal Practice Intelligence: Now we know how one of the Big4 will take over the legal services market. “KPMG has shown its hand on how it aims to become the dominant global player in legal services. Will it be through Artificial Intelligence, through Uberisation, through weaponising its battalions of accountants?” Post here.
From MyShingle.com: AI Lawyers Help Build Business for Human Lawyers. “AI and other technologies can actually help create jobs for lawyers by helping to aggregate tiny law problems in one place so that the ensuing economies of scale justify the cost of a lawyer.” Post here.
iManage and BLM Law Team Up on AI Claims Analytics Project. Post.
- This year’s onslaught of hackathons is upon us. Here are two:
From Law Firms:
Ward and Smith: Chris Edwards: Discovery For A Modern Age: E-Discovery, Metadata, And Cost Savings. Post.
Holland & Knight: David P. Sofge: Caught In The Middle With AI. “Some tech companies have been caught in the middle of this ideological fault line, called upon to address internal disagreements between marketing people intent on landing lucrative government contracts and, on the other side, key scientists and research personnel who are asking for clarification on the terms and conditions for use of their AI systems.” Post.
Fenwick & West: Michael T. Esquivel: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare: Diagnostics, R&D And Therapeutics. Post.
- Dentons: Alessandro Engst, Valerio Lemma: Artificial intelligence and big data analytics for the insurance industry: hot topics in the regulation of InsurTech. Post.
Ropes & Gray: Elizabeth Julia Smith, Stefan G. Herlitz: States Follow The IRS In Joining The Big Data Revolution. Post.
Perkins Coie: Gwyn McAlpine, Amy Monaghan: Artificial Intelligence: “I Don’t Care If Your Technology is a Ham Sandwich.” 42-minute podcast from ILTA Radio. “In this episode, our guest is Joe Davis….” “We talk about trends and impact of AI in the legal industry, strategy, data science and model training and FOMO. And yes, ham sandwiches.”
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton: Eamonn Moran: The Use Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Financial Services: Some Early Lessons For The Practitioner. Post.
From Artificial Lawyer:
- READ THIS –> Too Much Money To Care About Efficiency? A New York Conversation. “What use is legal tech if some of the very people it is designed to help don’t feel the need to use it, or ask for it to be used…?”
Which brings me to this related article from The Law Society Gazette: ‘The majority of law firms remain partnerships and money that would be spent on lawtech usually comes direct from the partner profit pool, something that can create a high bar to adoption,’ the report Lawtech Adoption Research, by technology sector analyst TechMarketView, notes. More coverage here and here.
- In this piece, Gabriel Teninbaum, professor at Suffolk University Law School, explains why this is so wrong-headed. Law firms either keep up with tech or get left behind.
- IP + Data Time Stamp Co. iDefendo Launches Public API To Increase Uptake. Post. “Intellectual property and data verification company, iDefendo, has made public an API that it hopes will allow anyone to make use of its technology.”
“Global legal services business, Herbert Smith Freehills, has successfully completed the first stage of their development partnership with English law litigation prediction system, Solomonic, and have agreed a deal to roll out its analytics platform across their UK disputes team.” Post.
- Back to The Foundations of Deal Tech With Merrill Corporation. Post.
“Law firms such as Weightmans, DLA Piper, Withers and Kennedys – plus US law firm, Sullivan & Worcester, as well as legal tech companies readers will already know, such as Autto, Legatics and Thirdfort, and many others, have shared in a major funding round run by the UK Government, which is very keen to support legal tech, and especially legal AI.” Post.
- What The Nordics Think About AI, Automation + Legal Tech in 2019. Post.
“You may have heard that global legal services business, Linklaters, has its very own legal AI platform, Nakhoda. But what is it doing? The answer is: they are trying to reinvent contracting. Why? Because they believe AI, as we have it today, doesn’t work as the legal sector wants it to.” Post.
Monax Smart Contract Co. Opens Up Public Beta. Post.
- “A survey of 30 professionals from predominantly Fortune 1,000 companies by legal AI company Seal Software found that about a third of them are using legal AI technology and several of them are now using it for a growing number of use cases.” Post. (Note: These are the responses of 30 people and should not be considered necessarily representative of any larger group.)
AI Pre-Screening Technology: A New Era for Contracts? – ThoughtRiver. Post.
- Gridlogics Announces Launch of ReleSense™ – An AI-driven NLP Engine Built for Patent and Scientific Literature. Release.
Empowering the Team With A Contract ‘Front Door’ – ContractPodAi. Post.
- “Just when you thought legal blockchain tech developments may have peaked, a new company arrives with an interesting use case: Letters of Credit, primarily for international trade, using smart contracts. The new company is LC LITE.” Post.
Vendor-related or Generated:
- From Infinnium, a software company that aims to redefine how law firms, corporations and other organizations interact with data in order to improve information management, information governance, regulatory and privacy compliance, and e-discovery.” Post. More coverage here. and LawSites: “Making its official launch today is
Atrium, Justin Kan’s legal tech startup, launches a fintech and blockchain division. Post.
This, from ContractWorks: Small Legal Teams Can Benefit from Contract Management Software.
- G M Corporate and Fiduciary Services Limited: Better Legal Insights Through Technology. Post.
Slaughters-backed AI platform Luminance wins Big Four client: Post. (Spoiler alert: it’s EY.)
Intapp Expands Its Professional Services and Legal Customer Base. Release.
Other Blockchain:
- This is an old (2016) academic piece, but may be of interest to some: The Commercial Law of Bitcoin and Blockchain Transactions.
- ICO No-No: On 2nd Look, Judge Grants SEC Injunction in Blockvest Case. “U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel granted a renewed injunction bid finding that Blockvest’s promotional materials constituted an offer of unregistered securities containing materially false statements.” Attorneys from several Big Law firms are quoted in the story.
Reed Smith: Herbert F. Kozlov, Anthony J. Diana, Le-el Sinai, Jeffrey D. Silberman: Lessons Learned – The Importance Of Governance And Regulatory Oversight In Storing Crypto Assets. Post.
Pryor Cashman: Eric D. Sherman, Marion R. Harris: Navigating The Risks Of Blockchain Technology In Commercial Real Estate. Post.
Ropes & Gray: Isabelle Farrar, Janice Lee: IRS Makes Cryptocurrency A Compliance Priority. Post.
Sheppard Mullin: James G. Gatto: How Blockchain Technology Brings Value To Healthcare. Post.
Morrison & Foerster: Dario F. de Martino, Spencer Klein, Julie O’Neill, Mary Race: Transforming The U.S. Healthcare Industry With Blockchain Technology. Post.
Skadden: Brian D. Christiansen, Michael E. Leiter, William Ridgway, William J. Sweet, Jr., Donald L. Vieira, Joe Molosky: Upcoming New York State Cybersecurity Regulation Deadlines. Post.
- BakerHostetler: Brian P. Bartish: Scams, Hacks, And Illicit Financing: Blockchain Threats Continue To Abound. Post.
BakerHostetler: Diana J. Stern: Blockchain Capital Markets Initiatives Continue Across The Globe. Post.
- BakerHostetler: Nicholas C. Mowbray: Blockchain Pilots For Supply Chain And Land Titles, Improved Analytics, And Decentralization. Post.
Cadwalader: Mark Highman: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Describes Regulatory Challenges Posed By Cryptocurrency. Post.
Hunton Andrews Kurth: Scott H. Kimpel: Pennsylvania Issues Money Transmitter Act Guidance For Virtual Currency Businesses. Post.