artificial intelligence touch

If you couldn't tell, artificial intelligence (AI) was the craze at Legalweek 2018.

Almost a dozen educational panels discussed AI. More vendor booths than you can count hyped AI features. Some experts even integrated AI into their job titles.

If you attended the flagship legal tech conference in New York this week, you likely learned something about machine learning, deep learning or supervised learning. Below are snippets of the in-depth dialogue that occurred across the Legalweek educational sessions focusing on AI.

Explosion of AI

The fascination with AI at Legalweek was a topic by itself. Many panelists likened the AI buzz to the interest in technology assisted review (TAR) at Legaltech a few years back.

“This is the year of AI. Some people are even making a verb out of it. It's best to figure out what you are talking about before you go AI'ing it all up.” Farrah Pepper, Legaltech Advisory Board

“Why now? None of you cared about AI 15 years ago. It's the confluence of many things coming together… more data, more computing power, more tools.” Tonya Custis, Thomson Reuters Labs

“You have to have AI in your name or people will think you are irrelevant.” Martin Tully, Actuate Law

“The term AI can mean something different to everyone.” Christian Mahoney, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

Legal Technology Adoption of AI

Software vendors are working to build AI capabilities into their platforms, mimicking human behaviors as closely as possible. AI-powered time-keeping, AI contract analysis, AI document review, AI legal research, AI brief writing—the sky is the limit for how AI will integrate into the legal market in the coming years.

“The goal is to collect information from a multiplicity of devices and sources, and only then can you start mining the intelligence.” Pallab Chakraborty, AI & Legal Technology Thought Leader

“AI within the legal research context is like a librarian's attempt to conduct a reference interview with the searcher. As you interact with the machine, it begins to learn and make research recommendations.” Don MacLeod, Debevoise & Plimpton

“The technology will be the prep cook for the chef who is the lawyer.” Martin Tully, Actual Law

Debunking AI Apprehension

The dangers of AI transcended every discussion, with some panelists expressing the view that AI may be a threat to our existence, and other panelists emphasizing that the legal industry needs to trust machines to find answers across disparate volumes of data.

“Data is the new oil. AI looks at connections in data that humans will never be able to tackle.” Bert Kaminski, GE Digital

“The law is not forgiving. If you make a mistake, you lose your opportunity to make an argument, and that fear is preventing people from adopting these emerging technologies.” Marla Crawford, Goldman Sachs

“We are teaching our students to work with these new tools, so their jobs are not replaced by technology.” Laura Norris, Santa Clara University School of Law

Michele C.S. Lange is a freelance writer and attorney based in Minneapolis, MN. She has more than 15 years of experience in the e-discovery industry and can be reached at [email protected].