54 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
APRIL/MAY 2017
| CONTRACT AUTOMATION |
madic lawyers" is on the rise. In early 2016,
for instance, Deloitte acquired Conduit
Law, a start-up that offers outsourced law-
yers to support in-house counsel, as well
as lawyers to temporarily fill on-demand
needs at external firms.
Companies like Axiom (US, Europe,
Singapore) or South Africa's Exigent
Group, with advertised lower overhead
costs for labour and infrastructure, pro-
vide potentially less expensive tech-enabled
legal outsourcing to Canadian firms and
companies.
Not So Risky Business
Whatever you call it, cognitive computing
or artificial intelligence, the idea of com-
puter brains running amok in legal services
makes some uneasy about the risks and li-
ability of leaving the draing of contracts,
due diligence — even, eventually, the ex-
ecution of contracts through blockchain
and distributable ledger technology — to
automated processes.
Nickerson and others are very risk-sen-
sitive. "When we are using the tools inter-
nally, I think there is no different risk than
with any knowledge-management system.
When lawyers use our model precedents
[with contract automation] we have a big,
bold note at the top that says, 'DON'T
JUST FILL IN THE BLANKS!' You
have to read it, you have to make sure it's
customized to fit your deal."
Where there may be risk is in the pos-
sibility that Canadian companies follow a
growing trend at law firms in the US open-
ing up extranet portals to their contract au-
tomation systems, so clients can fill in the
required blanks and queries themselves,
without ever speaking to a lawyer.
"ere's always some concern there that
they won't answer the question right," says
Nickerson. "ere could be some potential
liability there." In that scenario, she says,
law firms need to make clear the circum-
stances when a client should speak to an
actual lawyer.
And here's the thing — there will still
be actual lawyers down the road. Even
though Libratus, an AI computer, recently
beat some top-level poker players to win
$1.5 million in a Pittsburgh casino — a
significant technological development be-
cause the computer had to decide how to
out-bluff the humans — there will be blue-
suited and white-bloused survivors of AI
and contract automation. Even Mark Tam-
minga thinks so.
ese lawyers will have to be negotiators,
litigators, highly focused specialists. "e
law," says Tamminga, "is a very complicat-
ed area, full of subtlety. And that subtlety
won't be captured by machine intelligence
through the short term, or probably into
the middle term."
Tamminga sums up the changes that
cognitive computing and contract automa-
tion will bring to the business of Canadian
law this way: "If you are going to get bent
out of shape about what's coming, you are
in a world of hurt. It's neither good nor bad.
It has no emotive content. It's just coming.
Grit your teeth, buckle down, square your
shoulders and just do it."
Anthony Davis is a freelance business
and investigative writer based in Calgary.
ROBERT PERCIVAL
NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT
CANADA LLP
"Our competitors are
not just other law firms.
We are competing
increasingly with
technology companies
themselves; with
companies that want
to automate a lot
of the services law
firms provide."
PHOTO:
SHUTTERSTOCK
