LegalBusinessWorld

The debate about the replacement of lawyers by machines is already a cliché cropping up at most industry conferences and seminars, as many lawyers see themselves as threatened by this possibility considering the extraordinary capacities the technology is acquiring. If we focus on the advanced artificial intelligence and document automation tools currently being used in the industry we can say, without fear of contradiction, that jobs at law firms really are going to be destroyed. This phenomenon will even redefine the structure of the biggest firms, the early adopters of these technologies, for which these tools are already almost essential elements for providing service to clients, for example when dealing with due diligence for merger or acquisition processes. These firms will require fewer lawyers to do those jobs. But jobs related to document analysis are not the only ones that will be transformed by the new technology.