Bye Bye Lawyers?

Yes, you heard it right! The need for expensive corporate  lawyers could come to an end  in the near future. All of this could be caused by advancements in artificial intelligence called "e-discovery" software. What this software can do is analyze documents in a fraction of  the time a human could. As we all know time is money and by reducing the time it takes to analyze many documents, many companies will be able to save thousands of dollars. An example of this called Blackstone Discovery, was used to analyze roughly 1.5 million documents at a cost of less than $100,000. Hiring this large amount of documentation out to teams of lawyers would cost nearly 8 times that much money. Not to mention it would take the teams of lawyers much longer to look through all of the documentations.

As stated by lawyer Bill Herr, "From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer to be billed out." This brings up a good point because there will be a potential loss of business for corporate law firms. If companies choose the technology path there there will be benefits for corporations but a loss for law firms. There seems to always be a trade-off when a new technology emerges. Should we sacrifice human jobs for more efficient computers to do the work? That is a tough question to answer because there are  many pros and cons to both sides. If companies choose to be more efficient then that will save not only the company money, but the consumer as well. This will also cause a decrease in demand for lawyers and other staff to take care of these jobs.

We wont know until this new technology has been developed further, whether or not it will be a success. There will be a lot of debates on what path companies should take regarding there legal documentation review. Until that time comes we will have to wonder what the future holds for corporate America.