“Ai is legal counseling? Sounds without a jaw”… (Preliminary) Is it an illusion or pride of a lawyer?

In August 2019, the first battle between human and artificial intelligence (AI) lawyers took place in Asia. The task was’how to ask yourself’ over the labor contract. 9 teams of lawyers and 3 teams of AI lawyers competed. AI attorneys ranked 1st to 3rd. It was a human defeat.

The Ministry of Justice has been providing’Burby’, an AI legal counseling service since March 2018. Consultation on various living laws from labor fields such as wages and dismissal to inheritance. It is getting smarter by reinforcing information prediction function with self-learning ability function.

Multinational consulting firm Deloitte predicts that “the advancement of AI technology has already eliminated 31,000 jobs in the legal market. In the next 20 years, jobs in the legal market will be reduced by at least 39% because of AI.”

Attorneys in Korea or prospective lawyers appeared to be thinking far from the current changes and prospects. ‘It is difficult for AI to provide legal counseling, and the number of lawyers will increase as the area of ​​attorney work is expanded.’ As the ability to cope with the changing future,’marketing or management consulting ability’ was first picked, and’work ethics’ or’diversity tolerance’ according to change was not very important.

When the Korea Employment Information Service asked 212 lawyers and law graduate students, this result came out. It was a study to find out the prospects of the future legal market, job changes, and required competencies.

According to this, lawyers and prospective lawyers viewed the future legal market as expanding (50.5%) or at least maintaining the status quo (28.8%). Only two out of 10 (20.7%) predicted that it would shrink.

For this reason, (preliminary) attorneys thought that changes in personal-centered values ​​and lifestyle changes, such as increased disputes over companion animals, increased efficiency using AI, and changes in industrial structure, would expand the legal market. Therefore, the number of lawyers increased (82.9 points out of 100) and the field of work of lawyers was also expanded (72.5 points).

However, with regard to the scenarios that may appear in the legal market 10 years later, the answer was somewhat contradictory. The birth of a star lawyer (78.9 points) and the emergence of new legal services (81.1 points) were considered to be very likely to arrive. On the other hand, he predicted that he would not prefer counseling with AI (43.6 points). While citing the increase in efficiency using AI, it denied the expansion of AI in the legal market. Instead, they will find a lawyer. In addition, it gave a relatively low score (66.4 points) for the widespread use of AI in case law analysis. It is far from the trend of some law firms introducing AI lawyers. AI lawyers developed in Korea also ranked first in the Japanese civil law exam for the second consecutive year.

Park Ga-yeol, a researcher at the Korea Employment Information Service, said, “Respondents seem to think of AI lawyers as a search machine. It is not a simple search, but has its own learning function, and advanced algorithms are installed, showing that the possibility of AI development is infinite. Considering that, the respondents’ perceptions of reality and future changes appear to be quite conservative.”

Ten years later, when asked about the level of preparation of each individual’s ability to respond to changes in the legal market, they considered language skills, judgment and decision-making skills, situational awareness and strategic use skills to be important. However, the level of preparation for this ability cultivation remained in the 50-60 range.

As for the core competencies that need to be prepared further in the future, he cited marketing and management consulting ability, technology utilization ability, and differentiated strategy ability as the first hand. On the other hand, diversity tolerance and work ethics were at the bottom.

Researcher Park said, “The final legal judgment is in the domain of the judge. It can be difficult for AI to take over this. However, the domain of the lawyer is different from the role of the judge. The application of the law must comprehensively consider the relationship between humans, and case by case. Judgment may be mixed. Therefore, the differentiation of human lawyers to the advanced AI-based legal services seems to be the one that embraces diversity and increases the capacity to accommodate change.” In fact, there is an observation that it is not impossible to substitute a lawyer if AI goes beyond the level of assembling case law data and captures all of the court oral voice, written evidence, and answers.

Staff Reporter Kim Ki-chan [email protected]