Focus On …Can in-house counsel be replaced by artificial intelligence?

Ever since Artificial Intelligence (AI) popped up in the form of legal tech in companies providing a wide array of digital legal solutions, the question lingered as to whether AI will one day assume the roles of lawyers and be an even better lawyer. I don’t have a crystal ball and thus, the best answer is probably “it depends.”

Foremost, it depends on the area of law and the type of legal services you are providing and whether it lends itself to being coded into an algorithm. AI works best in the context of numbers, data and recurring themes where it can recognise patterns, put them into context and draw conclusions or make decisions. A lawyer works based on his knowledge of law and his experience, applying the law to the given facts, interpreting ambiguities and by using his most powerful tool: language. So, depending on whether you work in a company with a huge legal department with sub-specialisations, such as M&A, sales contracts or litigation or whether you are part of a small team that handles a wide array of legal topics from reviewing NDAs to advising the management board on latest legal developments, AI can become an important factor in your daily work and has the potential to make certain specialised legal departments superfluous.

I commonly receive emails from providers offering digital and AI based services that promise to make my work life easier and more efficient. This ranges from document management systems, smart contract solutions, research and discovery support systems to e-billing. However, I’m yet to receive an application which proffers to make myself and the team completely redundant. While drafting of NDAs or straight forward service contracts is probably more efficiently and cheaper done by AI, and simple claims, such as damages for flight delays, are already processed by AI based systems, majority of our work in-house entails the personal exchange with our internal and external stakeholders. None of the solutions that have been advertised to me can provide the type of individual advice sought from us by our internal clients.

In response to why that is, unlike data, legal knowledge is expressed in language -not numbers- and thus cannot be easily transformed into algorithms. Further, pure legal knowledge is not sufficient. You may be able to feed court decisions and laws into a system, however, they need to be applied in the given context by considering the individual circumstances of the matter. It requires us to understand the business goal, considering various non-legal factors such as the market or geopolitical environment before advising on a legal matter or when drafting a contract that translates business intent into legal terms. And not to forget the human factor, the relationship with our internal clients is based on trust, which is particularly important when your client seeks advice on a difficult decision he must make. So, I dare to say that AI will not make in house-lawyers superfluous.