Future of Lawyering
Field Notes from the Justicemaker Mela 2024
Last week I was in Bhopal at the Justicemaker Mela (Nov 29th and 30th, 2024) organised by Agami. This year the Mela brought together over 700 citizens from different walks of life - impact sector, students, lawyers, educators, activists, artists, technologists, judges, bureaucrats, and more. It was truly an inspiring few days that opened up new perspectives for me.
Those who know me, know how curious I am about all things AI. So apart from attending the thought-provoking sessions, I also facilitated two sessions on the Future of Lawyering. The format was simple: We had leading legal tech platforms showcase their product, followed by a discussion on specific product features. We also had open conversations on the broader themes related to technology, AI and the practice of law.
Indian Kanoon, Ad Idem, Jhana, Sarvam.AI, and Kuki Solutions—the featured legal tech companies—were brilliant. While I won’t delve into their specific product features here (you can explore those on their websites), I’m eager to share insights on the broader themes that emerged.
Weeks to Days and Days to Hours
A task of analysing tens or hundreds of documents would typically take a team of lawyers days (or weeks). The AI features on these products can bring this down to hours. This gives the lawyer(s) time to verify the findings with reference to the source document (which is linked through an audit trail) and spend more mental bandwidth on the overall analysis. What used to take weeks, can now take a few days. What used to take days, can be done in just a few hours.
Levelling the Research Playfield
One of the biggest features of AI is that it can talk to us in our language. We can input in natural language to get a result. Yes, there’s a lot of hype around prompt engineering - but that’s more about giving AI greater context to do the job. No longer does one have to be an expert in boolean search queries in order to get the intended result.
Of course, the bigger benefit is that AI can simplify the output in a way that we can understand. The implications on this for a citizen accessing legal services is immense. Like doctors have to deal with patients who’ve googled their symptoms (or used Doctronic); lawyers will have to deal with better informed clients who have an AI lawyer educating them.
Demand for AI Enabled Lawyers
Will AI replace lawyers? Some para-legal tasks will get automated, or become much faster to do. The real differentiator will be between lawyers who can use AI effectively and those who don't. This will show up in recruitment demand, remuneration levels and growth opportunities. An AI enabled lawyer, simply put, will be able to do the work of multiple people, possibly at a skill level higher than one’s peers.
AI Skills in Legal Education
What does this mean for legal education? So far, law schools have frowned upon the use of AI in assignments. With employers showing a preference for Law + AI skills, what must law schools do to prepare their students for this new reality? We had Prof. Aparna Chandra (NLSIU) and Prof. Rangin Tripathy (NLU-Orissa) share their insights at the session. Prof. Rangin mentioned the need for specific programs in law school on how students can safely and productively use AI. Prof. Aparna’s call to “use AI to offload labour and not thinking” brought home the role of law schools in building the core capacity to think and analyse. This is an “and”, not “or”, question in that we need both the rigour of the classroom, and the freedom of the sandbox.
Painting a picture with data
In the way that rocket technology helped us see the entire planet for the first time, AI enabled tools can help us see the “whole forest” of data on a single issue across time and place. They can be used to visually understand trend lines, and dive deep into inflection points of specific clusters of cases.
At the session, Indian Kanoon showed how the term “Artificial Intelligence” first appeared in case law in the 1950s and then underwent a big shift post 2015. Today, a meta analysis of an issue could change the way in which arguments are made and how precedents are presented. The data visualisation feature also makes it easier to benchmark, not only within your own data set but also across peers. This is a feature that we saw across Ad Idem (in the context of litigation), Sarvam.Ai & Jhana (in the context of research and contracts) and Kuki (in the context of ESG).
This piece is a poor attempt at capturing the rich discussions and showcases at the two sessions. They only give us a peek into the “art of the possible”. But if there is one takeaway we all walked away with, it is this:
The endeavour of Futuristic Lawyering is not to make a faster caterpillar, but to create a more beautiful butterfly.
PS:
One insightful discussion that deserves its own piece, was on the interplay of technology and the court system. We had the opportunity to understand the practical considerations of both the judiciary and legal tech platforms and left with a deeper appreciation of the priorities and constraints involved.
Ritvik Lukose is the Co-Founder of Vahura and Counselect. Both firms are known for their pioneering services that bring professionalism, efficiency and innovation to the legal sector.
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