Chatbots, much like artificial intelligence, have captured popular attention and fear in the last year. Within the legal community especially, the idea of a pre-programmed “bot” interacting with clients in lieu of a practicing attorney has generated a lot of interest and capital, but also a lot of very rigorous scrutiny.
The team behind LawBot, a chatbot designed by a group of recent law graduates from the University of Cambridge, learned firsthand about the legal community’s conflicting feelings about such technology. While the chatbot they put forward got largely laudatory press (including my own ), it drew some sharp criticism from legal bloggers about its effectiveness.
