Lawyers Embrace Artificial Intelligence Through E-Discovery

T.V. viewers who watched Watson beat out its fellow contestants on “Jeopardy!” a few weeks ago witnessed a computer’s ability to imitate human reasoning, to a certain extent. What viewers may not have known is that attorneys have been using similar technology for some time to help build their cases. As discussed in The New York Times’ article, “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software”, lawyers are increasingly using “e-discovery” software to examine and gather documents relevant to their cases. Whereas in the past, an army of expensive lawyers might’ve spent endless days sifting through thousands, even millions of documents and evidence in preparation for a case, computers and e-discovery software use linguistic and sociological techniques to filter and gather the necessary documents (more accurately, quickly and cheaply). In the linguistic approach, the program may search for specific key words or phrases. Other e-discovery programs can filter documents by searching for suspicious activities and interactions between people – who emailed who, and when, or at what point they switched the media they communicated in – or even looking for sentiment in communications (whether an email was positive or negative).
The economic impacts of e-discovery, which can save clients millions of dollars, are still under debate. Some experts believe automation creates unemployment, while others believe it merely slows job growth. On the other hand, other experts point to technologies’ limits. For instance, e-discovery doesn’t entirely eliminate the need for manpower – the documents collected by the software still have to be reviewed and read by lawyers.
For now, however, lawyers are taking notice of the benefits of e-discovery.
“People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t,” says attorney Bill Herr, who used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end when he worked for a major chemical company.