When Jeopardy superchampion Ken Jennings fell to IBM’s Watson, a chill fell over the ranks of white-collar professionals who saw the cold, merciless grip of technology tightening its grip around their hearts just as surely as the steam hammer did in John Henry. Lawyers in particular recognized that the slayer of the Jennings dragon wasn’t destined to stalk syndicated television, making Alex Trebek’s contestant chit-chat, almost improbably, more stilted and awkward. No, Watson was coming for our jobs.

As much as lawyers lionize themselves in the media — pointing to the tenacity of Jack McCoy, the soaring oratory of Jake Brigance, and… whatever the hell those How To Get Away With Murder morons are doing — deep down lawyers know that the bulk of the profession involves document review, rote agreement-drafting tasks, and data mining caselaw. We make human drones do this work now, why not shift some of the work to the electronic brain?

Back in 2014, we warned that this revolution would overtake law eventually, and now it has. As Steve Dykstra discussed yesterday, Watson has begat ROSS, the “Super Intelligent Attorney.” ROSS doesn’t actually stand for anything, but I guess IBM thought it would market a little better than “Darrowtron the Destroyer.”

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