The legal profession is undergoing a transformation due to an entirely new breed of intelligent technologies. This interesting information came to us from The Hill in their article, “The blinding of justice: Technology, journalism and the law.”

Similar to the way technology has impacted the field of journalism, the legal profession are dependent on decisions made early in the technological transition which are driving the process. The power of technology and the needs of people in a democracy are deeply intertwined.

The law is seeing the emergence of systems based on analytics and cognitive computing in areas that until now have been largely immune to the impact of technology. These systems can predict, advise, argue, and write; they are entering the world of legal reasoning and decision making.

Sites like LegalZoom provide templates for contracts, wills, and articles of incorporation.  Companies such as BlueStar and services like OpenText’s Axcelerate provide text analytics and machine learning in support of intelligent discovery, while OpenText’s Perceptiv can do deeper contract analysis.

Where does this leave the actual human lawyers?

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.