“Cyborg lawyers” will be the way of the future, according to Bond University Professor Nick James who spoke at this morning’s Queensland Law Society Best Lawyers Breakfast.
The Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law took an “optimistic and enthusiastic view” of “human plus technology” at the Customs House event, which was supported by event partner Hays Recruitment.
The breakfast was held at Customs House.
Professor James said our reliance on technology, including mobile phones, was part of the profession’s progression, in his address on the legal tech arms race.
“We have become so reliant on our phones, but let me take a positive perspective on them,” he said.
“I think, in a good way, we are merging with our phones. We are today genuine cyborgs.
“Our total self is an organic part and a technological part, and we are incomplete without the technology part. Myself includes my phone, my memory is here (pointing to his phone) and it is also here (heading to his head). My memory is being extended by my phone’s storage.
“I think the cyborg being – the human plus technology – is a better person or at least a more productive, more knowledgeable and better connected version.
“The cyborg me is an enhanced version. My phone isn’t going to replace me, I’m not worried about that, but this new merged entity is a better version of me.
“I think that notion of the enhanced cyborg human is the mirrored by the notion of the cyborg lawyer, which is what we will become.”
He said the cyborg lawyer leveraged technology to provide high-quality legal services but “combined with it the capacity for human connection, for empathy, emotional intelligence”.
The legal tech arms race was today’s topic.
Professor James said the recent proliferation of artificial intelligence and AI-drive tools were “accelerating the emergence” of the cyborg lawyer.
“It is also accelerating the arms race between legal tech providers and legal tech adaptors, ie lawyers and law firms that are using the technology to compete with their competitors.”
He said new technology, such as data analytics, was being used to process enormous amounts of legal information. It was being used to predict case outcomes, identify trends in court systems, and analyse large quantities of documents to make data-driven legal decisions.
Professor James said a popular tool in the United States now “analyses millions and millions of court decisions and helps lawyers to predict the behaviour of judges or behaviour of the jurors or lawyers, and to develop data-driven litigation strategies”.
“So AI is actually making this big data capacity faster and more interesting.”
He said there was a great phase saying that AI will not replace lawyers, but lawyers using AI will replace lawyers not using AI.
“I think there’s a lot in that.”
Professor James said versions of AI were becoming increasingly and readily available “which to some degree was evening the playing field”.
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