TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN THREATENING COURT REPORTERS FOR DECADES Using AI technology to relieve humans of the mundane tasks of sorting and organizing, and instead spending that crucial first few years as an associate actually practicing law will only produce more prepared and experienced, enthusiastic lawyers. The emergence of very basic and simple AI doing the work of entry-level associates in the categorization and organization of millions of pages of discovery documents was discussed, and a very refreshing, optimistic view of this technology’s place in the practice of law was the resounding takeaway.
Last month I attended an all-day seminar put on by the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association regarding AI and other technologies that are rapidly seeping into the daily operations of mid-sized to gigantic law firms all around the world. Like all industries, the legal industry is being confronted every day with threats of technologies that will replace human beings, and if you read enough articles on LinkedIn, you may even be led to believe that lawyers will be completely replaced by AI in the next few years.
A balanced human reaction to technology is to adapt to the game-changers, but to temporarily marvel, be amused by and then subsequently learn from the ones that failed more often than worked. Granted this is a very old example, but this same principle can be applied to just about every technology that advances us and technologies that do not spawn economic, workforce and industry growth that once seemed cutting-edge will end up in the graveyard beside the tombstones of LaserDisk and MySpace. For example, the refrigerator sent many ice and milk deliverymen to the unemployment lines, but created an entire frozen food industry, frozen and refrigerated trucking industry, not to mention the countless jobs in the design and production of millions of refrigerators. I also understand that when a truly innovative technology emerges, it will create far more jobs than it will eliminate, and sometimes it will create entire industries. Having said that, and being a late Gen-Xer, I grew up with rapid technology growth and recognize when a newly introduced technology is beneficial for all, and conversely, when a new technology is simply a bunch of bells and whistles that does nothing more than complicate something that already exists. However, when you get past the scary headlines and read the content, most of these articles point out that while the technology may be there in theory and under extremely controlled laboratory settings, it is nowhere near the level of sophistication needed to perform these jobs in the real world, and would perhaps just cause an increase (ironically) in the production of incompetent automated consumer-complaint chatbots. Not a day goes by I don’t read some sort of labor force doomsday article with a headline warning of technology, AI, and machines we can’t even begin to understand taking over every profession known to man from folding laundry to performing complex radiographic studies and brain surgery.
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
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