Machine learning is now able to analyze court decisions and predict how judges may respond in certain situations, based on an analysis of existing caselaw. Artificial intelligence technology is currently available to analyze tax and employment caselaw, but it's easy to see how this could be relevant to the insurance space as well – particularly in the claims area. Potential uses could include analysis of decisions around tort liability, for example, or accident benefits cases. A tax law expert recently provided an illustration of how the technology works in a webinar Wednesday. Benjamin Alarie, CEO and co-founder of Blue J Legal, uses the artificial intelligence suite to predict how the courts may decide issues about things such as tax deductions.

Employment Foresight has a number of uses for human resources and legal teams in businesses. The software uses machine learning to identify hidden patterns in judicial rulings, enabling users to navigate difficult areas of employment law and reach more informed decisions around issues such as reasonable notice, employee drug testing, worker classification and exemptions to overtime. The platform collects and analyzes the facts and findings from thousands of previous employment cases, and uses the information to predict how a court might rule in new circumstances. This achieved through statistical methods based on machine learning, focusing in the identification of relationships between different factors like the industrial sector; length of employment; and employee's position. This is to gain an insight into the industrial relations process.

As far as career choices go, working in mortgage financing at one of the country's top banks seemed like a solid bet. She figured there would be more job security than many other professions and plenty of opportunities to climb the corporate ladder in Toronto. Over the next seven years, she says she had a front-row seat to watch automation -- most often intelligent software -- take over nearly every aspect of mortgage processing. Tory Shoreman worked at one of Canada's top banks and says she watched automation take out 40 per cent of her department. "I witnessed about 40 per cent of my department get laid off and the reason they were given was automation," the 32-year-old told CBC News.

When you think about it, not a lot has changed in the legal world from the days of To Kill A Mockingbird to the latest John Grisham thriller. Sure, literature snobs may insist that Atticus Finch's flawless moral heroism should never be compared to the conflicted protagonists of contemporary legal page-turners, but in terms of the substance of how lawyers do their lawyering, the fundamentals have barely changed in 80 years, from the career track of a young lawyer to the set-up of a law firm. The same cannot be said of virtually any other profession. Indeed, the legal industry seems more dusty than dynamic; the robes and wrinkles that mark those at the top of the field hardly scream modernity. But change is afoot, as a couple of powerful market forces are driving law firms to adopt modern corporate efficiency.