Northwestern University law professor John O. McGinnis, writing in the latest issue of City Journal, explores how the rise of machine intelligence is disrupting and transforming the legal profession.

In the journal, which is published by the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, Mr. McGinnis identifies five areas of the law that “face encroachment” by computers:

1) E-discovery is the area “ripest for computational transformation,” he says:

2) The rise of computation in legal search isn’t a “one-time disruption” but “a continuing revolution,” he writes:

3) The automating of legal forms ”will take on ever-wider scope,” according to Mr. McGinnis:

4) The automation of simple briefs and memos is also over the horizon, the professor says:

5) Legal analytics are another source of competition:

Mr. McGinnis says the biggest winners of this transformation will be “lawyers who can use machine intelligence to create an automated large-scale practice.”

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