Legal Commentary

Computers replacing lawyers? It's already happening.

By Patrick J. Lamb

The New York Times reported over the weekend on Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software.  Terrific article.  It focuses on the use of software for e-discovery rather than manpower.  It is only a matter of time until this is the norm.  The article lead to several others, which are worth reading too.  Chris Dale of the e-Disclosure Information Project summarized them in his post, King Ludd and the Lawyers – e-Discovery and the Luddite Fallacy.   I am less concerned with the employment issue discussed in the articles than I am about the speed and cost savings associated with the use of the software approach.  The real kicker, though, is the reference to quality at the very end of the New York Times article:

The computers seem to be good at their new jobs. Mr. Herr, the former chemical company lawyer, used e-discovery software to reanalyze work his company's lawyers did in the 1980s and '90s. His human colleagues had been only 60 percent accurate, he found.

'Think about how much money had been spent to be slightly better than a coin toss,' he said.

I know there are other studies that confirm that software outperform humans, and it doesn't take much imagination to see why.  Profound boredom generally does not yield great results.  But software doesn't have to be better--that's just a added benefit--it just has to be as good as human review, and cheaper.  And once the software is written, the marginal cost incurred in the review and screening process is not huge. 

Lawyers who push for manual review, particularly within their own firms, are going to have an increasingly hard go of making that sale.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on March 08, 2011 (boomark / email).