The legal compliance team at JPMorgan Chase & Co wait anxiously to see if their new gadget will achieve what they think it can. A machine is reviewing a year's worth of legal contracts that traditionally would require the team to put in some 360,000 professional hours. In little over two seconds, the information is delivered. In just 2.85 seconds, an algorithm replicated the efforts of hundreds of contract lawyers and clerks. The algorithms were given the contracts prior to correction and then the same contracts after they were reviewed and amended.

The legal compliance team at JPMorgan Chase & Co wait anxiously to see if their new gadget will achieve what they think it can. A machine is reviewing a year's worth of legal contracts that traditionally would require the team to put in some 360,000 professional hours. In little over two seconds, the information is delivered. In just 2.85 seconds, an algorithm replicated the efforts of hundreds of contract lawyers and clerks. The algorithms were given the contracts prior to correction and then the same contracts after they were reviewed and amended.

Nearly 250 years ago, the British East India Company under governor general Warren Hastings started'Dewani' (civil) and'Fauzdari' (criminal) court system. The first Law Commission, set up in 1834 under Lord T B Macaulay, did stupendous work towards codification of civil and criminal laws. After the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, the British government acted on the drafts presented by the commission and enacted Civil Procedure Code, 1859; Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Criminal Procedure Code, 1861. Codification of civil and criminal laws led to a spurt in court-based litigation which stamped out the traditional panchayat system that provided inexpensive justice. By 1920s, India had a population of 11 crore. Yet, courts had started feeling the heat of pendency.

Nearly 250 years ago, the British East India Company under governor general Warren Hastings started'Dewani' (civil) and'Fauzdari' (criminal) court …

Ibrahim Diallo was allegedly fired by a machine. Recent news reports relayed the escalating frustration he felt as his security pass stopped working, his computer system login was disabled, and finally he was frogmarched from the building by security personnel. His managers were unable to offer an explanation and powerless to overrule the system. Some might think this was a taste of things to come as artificial intelligence is given more power over our lives. Personally, I drew the opposite conclusion.

The term "artificial intelligence" conjures different meanings depending upon one's perspective. If you are Elon Musk of Tesla fame, you view artificial intelligence in apocalyptical terms, as something that could lead to "a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind." While we hope it will not be lethal, the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the legal services industry poses its own challenges. Law firms accustomed to using lawyers to perform certain tasks are now encountering technology, including artificial intelligence, that can perform tasks in seconds or minutes rather than the hours spent by a human counterpart. Although there are a growing number of firms using alternative fee arrangements, the majority of law firms continue to rely upon the billable hour as the source of their revenues.

Blockchain, artificial intelligence and IoT are the future, but are companies ready for the legal issues relating to the new model of business? The Internet of Things obliges companies to change their models of business since one-off contractual relationships where they were selling a product are replaced by long term relationships for the provision of services with continous exchanges of data, potential liabilities and contractual issues. This is enhanced by artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies which increase the potential benefits, but at the same time also with higher reliance on the proper functioning of technologies. The shift that is happening in any business can be quite well represented in the image below of a "pizza as a service". Even the more traditional businesses might turn into a service if for instance, products are no longer purchased as part of specific order, but on the basis of a monthly fee which is calculated on the needs of the purchaser through sensors that collect information on the actual consumption of each product.

There is no denying that advanced technology has traditionally displaced the workforce and a multitude of professions. How many blacksmiths and horse-drawn carriage workers do you know? In the past, we contended with waves of industrialism and disruption by shifting our skill sets and way of life. For centuries it has worked as our employment evolved with the times. But many today are fearful that this time it will be different.

TrademarkNow provides a comprehensive web-based system for trademark management. At its core is an artificial intelligence model of trademark similarity (likelihood of confusion) based on the authors doctoral research in computational legal theory on computational modelling of vagueness and uncertainty in law at the University of Helsinki, currently at its final stages. The system utilizes a carefully designed blend of both rule-based and statistical techniques to deliver results while managing real-world complexity in the trademark domain. After all, in principle a trademark information system has to be able to represent the entire world of commerce in all existing and fantasy languages in one way or another.

Shares in the world's largest smartphone and semiconductor maker slid 2.3% on Friday after Samsung said it expected second-quarter operating profits of 14.8 trillion won ($13.2 billion), below analyst estimates of 15.1 trillion won. That result would break the South Korean company's string of four record-shattering quarters. Memory chips go in everything from smartphones to internet-connected light bulbs to self-driving cars, and growth in demand for the chips had outrun supply. The current pullback in their pricing reflects stepped-up production by manufacturers plus sluggish smartphone sales. Even so, the industry is still healthy.