LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
SEPTEMBER 2017 53
| ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |
calls, trying to avoid picking up the phone,
still getting caught, and having a ruined
weekend. Better versions of this story in-
clude a partner knowing about the dili-
gence earlier in the week, but forgetting to
staff anyone till Friday.
"Misses — Pretty much every Biglaw
midlevel M&A associate through junior
partner has a time when they realized
their juniors systematically missed find-
ing things they were supposed to. Better
(most?) versions of this story involve real-
izing the diligence is not accurate very late
night or right before the weekend, and hav-
ing to redo it all.
"New Categories — e team finishes a
multi-week diligence project, then the deal
structure changes. It turns out the original
review missed a now-critical category."
Abramowitz then asks, "Okay, but aside
from lazy, inexperienced or depressed first
years, what are the structural or hierarchi-
cal problems with how firms are doing due
and what are best le to human beings."
9
But when it comes to learning more
about computer language, there is arguably
a level of fear holding lawyers back, a worry
about being replaced or at least eclipsed.
For senior lawyers who do not themselves
execute on due diligence anymore, they
may be content to have juniors continue to
do it as a learning exercise. But what about
those students and associates who are ex-
ecuting on manual due diligence? What do
they think about it?
Noah Waisberg le his early career in Big
Law in the US to establish an AI due dili-
gence company. Zach Abramowitz, who
also le BigLaw, has a blog-casting plat-
form, ReplyAll. e two of them dialogue
about the boredom, even resentment, they
say that newer lawyers express. Abramow-
itz categorizes the scenarios that give rise to
errors in human-conducted due diligence:
"Timing — Lots of people have stories
about Friday aernoon partner staffing
JUDITH MCKAY
MCCARTHY TÉTRAULT LLP
"The tools are fairly
new and still being refined
for use in the due diligence
context. We are engaged
in constant dialogue to help
shape these tools for our
purposes. It is an exciting
time to work with them,
but it is still early stages
and they are not without
growing pains."
