In a recent blog post discussing artificial intelligence (AI) and the law the author unfortunately falls into one of the classic tropes that ends up stifling meaningful conversation on the subject. After making reference to our “digital overlords” Rosalind English talks about how the ‘codes’ might well be here to take over.

All in good fun perhaps but this demonstrates that while AI is increasingly making it onto the agenda at conferences and speeches it is still not well understood or taken seriously. This is a shame because AI is likely to become integrated into legal practice over the coming decades and if practitioners fail to get a grasp of what it does or how it works then there will be a tendency to follow the technology blindly instead of thinking critically like all good lawyers should.

Taking a step back, legal systems are perfectly suited to the use of machine learning because at different levels they are both based on rules. Theft is defined as the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. Logically speaking there are conditions and when those conditions are met the crime of theft is made out against a defendant.

That doesn’t mean that we take this principle to an extreme and start replacing Crown prosecutors with robots. AI is a tool that can be used to assist lawyers with some of the more menial aspects of their job but is unlikely to ever replace human argumentation about sensitive or moral questions. In the example above, what it actually means to be ‘dishonest’ is subject to debate and we have even seen changes on this very point in the past couple of years.

Thinking critically about this also means we dig deeper into the social impact of AI. The technology has to be coded by humans who inherently bring their own biases to the table. That makes little difference when deciding what to plant in a field but when the difference can end up being someone’s liberty or access to justice the inputs that we use deserve the utmost scrutiny.

Even in the average law firm the attraction of AI does not come from a beneficent appreciation of technology but rather an attempt to increase profit margins. If more tasks can be completed without as much human labour then we will see a change in the size and shape of the legal workforce.

AI might not be here to overthrow the humans but it does have half an eye on your job.