How Legal Technology Algorithms Might Lead to Attorney “Skills Fade”
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There’s an interesting article by Professor Brian Sheppard (Seton Hall) in the March issue of Thomson Reuters’ Practice Innovations newsletter that discusses the phenomenon of “skill fade” which occurs when workplace technologies replace human decision-making. By way of example, Professor Sheppard notes that several studies have shown that the use of autopilot technology for commercial flights can lead to a decline in pilot skill. Professor Sheppard then hypothesizes about whether the same could happen to lawyers as a result of the increased use of Artificial Intelligence driven by algorithms to make strategic decisions about a client’s case that in the past would have been done by the lawyers themselves. Here’s an excerpt:
Read original article. . . .
Artificial intelligence—particularly the sort that uses algorithm-powered machine learning—can evaluate, sort, and cull information outside the lawyer’s view. For example, existing technology allows cases or other resources to be selected, processed, and used as citations in machine-generated memoranda or contracts. The automated process of creation is almost always hidden. Companies wall it off in the name of intellectual property. But even if there were no walls, lawyers would be unable to understand the decision-making process that led an algorithm to sort information. And states could not set ethical duties at such a challenging level.
However, it is not easy to see how the inscrutability of algorithms creates an ethical problem. Won’t lawyers be able to assess whether the technology is producing better outputs than they could have produced without it? Won’t they be able to review memoranda and check for errors?
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