It is an immensely encouraging sign to have dedicated events on LegalTech in India — a proof that the ecosystem is growing and only looking up! ✨

During the event, I focused on the trends in the LegalTech sector that are seen across countries and the factors that are bringing about the transformation.

Here are some of the areas I touched upon:

➡️ The pace of LegalTech adoption across law firms and in-house legal teams is “slow and steady”. While there is a wide spread realisation about the importance of using AI and other LegalTech tools, decisions are made after careful consideration of what actually delivers value for the company and ultimately the clients.

➡️ While technology remains a key aspect of the transformation, one cannot overlook the fact that LegalTech is also about change management for the organisation itself. Integration of many of these tools demand internal restructuring and streamlining the processes. Buying the coolest product or finding the right vendors are important but the organisations that are able to take people along, are ultimately able to showcase successful adoption of technology.

➡️ The business model of law is changing. While technology is rapidly taking over many legal tasks (and also roles unfortunately), the need for legal work is expanding! The amount of technology regulation that are coming up is one proof that signals the wave of what the legal jobs now entail. And the lawyers of the future understand that there is no excuse for avoiding technology.

➡️ Most law schools are slow at adapting to the changing nature of legal work and in offering courses that are relevant for these times. Regardless, there is a strong demand for having more courses on law and technology. A number of short online courses have emerged which young lawyers and legal graduates are taking advantage of to upskill themselves.

➡️ Yes, the voices for more AI in law are being heard more clearly — as specialised and reliable LLMs are being introduced in the market. But the concerns for hallucination cannot be wished away either (at least for now). As ‘human in the loop’ becomes a necessary condition to introducing AI in legal workflow, human centric thinking is fast becoming a thing too (and hopefully we see more of that in the coming years).

All in all, the profession of law is changing structurally and changing for the better! Innovation, design thinking and technology in law — have started to become more normalised. It is so interesting when what was once considered fringe becomes mainstream. It only goes on to show the speed at which the change is occurring!

Big thanks to the TechSommet team for the invitation and looking forward to more such events in the future.

hashtag#LegalInnovation hashtag#LegalTech hashtag#LegalOps hashtag#India hashtag#GlobalTrends

⚖️ A successful outcome to a dispute is one that ensured that the dispute never took place at all!

⚡ As they say, prevention is better than cure. But do we talk about that enough in the world of law?

So much of the discourse around legal solutions is “post facto” (after the event takes place) that maybe we need to pause and think how can we “nip a legal problem in the bud”.

Preventative medicine is a discipline by itself. What would prevention look like for law? Would the right set of policies, guidelines and humane technologies bring about the necessary focus on avoiding a conflict altogether?

The next big thing in law should be about creating robust, trustworthy societies and tools that build a legally aware citizenry which is not prone to disputes. It may not have to be yet another fancy AI tool. Or maybe an AI tool that helps us get there quicker?

➡ The interest and uptake of Legaltech is not only growing but it is fast becoming a crowded space! GenAI has been a gamechanger in finally making the much-needed technological tools relevant to the legal service delivery globally. Many startups are joining the fray of developing these products. But staying relevant as a startup in this space is critical. While the market opportunity is growing and the change is here to stay, the startups that build the trust with law-firms and legal departments and offer value-added services to the clients, may just have the winning advantage.

➡ Challenge will also come from the fact that integrating these tools in day-to-day operations and training them with desired level of accuracy will need hands-on work and dedicated time from those within the firms and companies. In an industry such as legal practice, accuracy is key and those who do put in the time and effort will gain a competitive advantage. The LegalAI startups that can offer ways to address this will be in high demand.

➡ While the jobs of the lawyers are set to change massively in the coming years, the lawyers are not going anywhere! New technologies have created newer legal issues and with the amount of regulation that is being brought in to regulate the new technologies, those who are able to stay on the top of their game in understanding both the new regulations and how technology works, will be in high demand!

➡ And lastly, the ones who are changing the game in legaltech are not necessarily the lawyers — it is in fact, those outside of the system — the technologists, the entrepreneurs, the designers and those who see the market opportunity. Legal profession has so far been, for the right reasons and wrong, highly unwilling to let those outside of the system come anywhere close. This might just be set to change. And if this happens to make laws and legal processes more accessible for people while ensuring accuracy and safety, it may be very welcome.

#legaltech #legalAI #legalinnovation #AI

Link to the podcast: https://www.thuas.com/about-thuas/lighthouse/podcast/what-legal-innovation

One compares large language models against lawyers, showing how the AI outperforms humans in accuracy, speed and cost efficiency in contract review. The paper astonishingly reveals how the large language models offer 99.97% cost reduction over traditional lawyering, enhancing accessibility and efficiency. https://lnkd.in/ep7HePvb

Another paper profiles legal hallucinations in large language models and expresses concern over the potential risks from their use. It shows how alarmingly prevalent legal hallucinations are, with almost as high as 88% of the times in some generative AI tools. https://lnkd.in/eJ9MxiW9

The growing body of academic research in using generative AI for legal services provides food for thought.

Legal services entail a combination of different tasks and skills. In the way the large language models are being developed, at present, we see them slowly getting better at some tasks more accurately than others. With law firms across the world searching for ways to integrate generative AI in automating the repetitive tasks (at least for now), the naysayers point to the staggering hallucinations, errors and inaccuracy of legal advice.

If AI can save time and costs for legal advice to significant levels, it is truly disruptive. On the other hand, hallucinations are a significant issue, especially in legal matters. However, the human errors in suggesting the right remedies to clients and the per hour rate of a human lawyer are areas that also need scrutiny from the lenses of access to legal remedies. Hallucinations providing inaccurate legal information is worrying but perhaps over time, the machines will get better at coming up with the right citations and references. Imagine the potential of a reliable and accurate legal service AI!

Having said that, boundaries will have to be drawn on how much to rely on technology and where human intervention may be needed. One of the key concerns remains for humans to retain their autonomy in the face of the pervasiveness of technology. While lawyers like to believe they still retain the more relationship-based aspects of lawyering, there are AIs coming which will be far better at providing counselling to humans and can easily take over tasks needing more emotions and empathy. But perhaps AI will never learn what it is to be a human. Or perhaps it will.

These are unprecedented times. Times like never before. Perhaps we will come upon a time when AI will be able to write, research, counsel, mediate, prevent, argue cases and even execute them. Which aspects of legal service humans will continue to excel at then? Maybe an important inquiry for an academic piece?

As I read this quote above, I was reminded of an Indian fable. A king once invited 6 blind men to describe an elephant by touching it. Each of the 6 men described it based on the part they touched — believing that to be the shape of the animal. This simple yet profound ancient story hides within it, a crucial message for our future.

Like all technologies, the impact of artificial intelligence depends on how we put it to use. Considering its powerful capabilities, there is a need to regulate it and ensure that it follows standards of ethics and responsibility — in a way that it ultimately helps the humanity. But this brings up many questions. Whose ethics are we talking about here? What constitutes ‘good’ use of artificial intelligence and which direction, is the correct one? Who should decide?

These are no easy questions and defining the AI standards is no easy task. Just like the blind men in the story, there are limits to what we perceive and understand. Our subjective perspectives are limited to our experiences and realities. The only way to arrive at the truth is by acknowledging the truth of others.

The challenge of developing guardrails to the use of this powerful technology will be helped by an approach that accounts for the diversity in understanding our realities. This can be achieved by thinking as a collective rather than in our silos. Just as the ancient fable drives home the point, the whole is the sum of all parts. And so it also goes for the truth.

Perhaps at the core of our understanding about our civilisation are the stories and beliefs the previous generations have passed on to us. Perhaps in them lie the fundamentals to make sense of our future.

*Quote from the book ‘The Age of AI’.

I was invited by the prestigious NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad to conduct a workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Legal Innovation. The enthusiasm of the students for these topics was infectious! I thoroughly enjoyed the conversations on the possibilities of regulations to be futuristic and how innovation can be infused in the way law is practiced and understood.

AI has brought legaltech and legal design on the center stage in a big way. This is an especially remarkable time for those who have been working to make laws and legal processes more accessible and user-friendly.

There is a lot of work ahead. Technology not only influences the practice of law but newer technologies need laws to regulate their use considering their impact in multiple dimensions of our lives.

While there are legitimate fears of lawyers’ jobs being replaced with the changes we see around us, there is also a growing need for those with legal skills to come up with the relevant policy frameworks and guidelines for making the proliferation of technology safe and human-centered. And this calls for newer ways to train our future legal minds and expose them to conversations that may be unsettling but helps them respond to the realities before us in constructive and creative ways.

Here is to hoping for more such initiatives in the new year to dive deeper into the intersection of law, design and technology. Happy 2024!

The mission behind my initiatives has been to make laws and legal processes more accessible for people. And while it is heartwarming to see the fast-paced changes in this space today, there is still much left to be desired. Laws still need to be simplified, legal processes can be made accessible and ideally, certain disputes can be ‘nipped in the bud’ — across the world.

One of the key lessons I have learnt in my time as a justice-tech founder is that while small is beautiful, scale matters. But not only are the right business models difficult to create in justice-tech, there is also the hesitation to work across sectors in finding solutions.

With the excitement of artificial intelligence technology, I personally think there is much hope to galvanise this moment and use ‘AI for Good’. Right legal frameworks and regulations on AI are the need of the hour — but there is also the requirement to make space for the innovation that can help solve some of the fundamental problems of access to justice and to legal information. Hopefully more data scientists, design thinkers, lawyers, policy-makers and all those who have interest in solving this problem can come together around AI to develop justice solutions that matter — at scale. And until then, one must never forget to soak up the startup-mindset once in a while!

The genie is out of the bottle!

ChatGPT and other GenAI tools are here to stay. As educators, the question about using artificial intelligence is no longer that of “if or whether” but perhaps more about “what and how”. Here are three takeaways from some of my recent interactions on how AI is set to impact education:

1) Embracing the AI tools, understanding how they work and having conversations about their optimal use for the learning journeys of the students might just be a good way of dealing with them. This could even be in coming up with what constitutes fair use of AI tools for tasks such as setting and grading assignments, research or for putting policy in place for how the students can use them optimally.

2) Artificial Intelligence is more than just ChatGPT. Its use is effective in opening up vast possibilities including creating newer assessment tools or gamified learning or even developing better understanding of metacognitive skills of the students. Using it well has the possibility of making education truly customised, taking into consideration the learning needs of each student.

3) The use of AI in education is packed with considerable ethical dilemmas too. No wonder the EU AI Act puts use of AI in the field of education under the high-risk category. We are fraught with the balance of trying to use these tools optimally and yet being cautious in drawing the right boundaries. This is no easy task. Perhaps this difficulty is also what gives a silver lining. Some questions are still in the domains of the human beings and perhaps will be so for long. May be the questions will become more complex with the time but until then, we can be rest assured of our relevance.

Recently, while visiting London, I came upon the Courts again and it felt like coming a full circle! I couldn’t help but reflect upon all that I have learnt and aspire for in this wonderful profession of law.

Looking back, it feels so much has changed in the last years and yet so little:

1. The ideals of ensuring that justice is done in the world inspire most legal professionals. And yet, how often we let those ideals go unseen! The see-saw between personal excellence and the greater good for humanity continues to puzzle even the best of us and challenges us to navigate towards our own personal balance.

2. This need for balance is all the more pronounced for the profession which deals with laws and justice. It can certainly not exist in isolation and its interwovenness with the society has to be acknowledged more often and more affirmatively. It is especially relevant for the world we live in today.

3. And that brings me to my third and final point — as the work of the legal profession shapes the society, keeping pace with societal developments is also at the foundation of what we do. With technological innovation or even without — constantly checking the pulse of what the clients seek, what the law students seek and what people at large seek is not only futuristic but also set in stone by the stalwarts of our field.

The approach that is relevant for our future — is something that we just need to look back to find. Like coming a full circle — like being back at the place of your first legal job!