A well-dressed humanoid not named Ross. Lawyers often get a bad reputation for being slimy and conniving (deservedly or not), but ROSS has neither of those qualities. Ask ROSS to look up an obscure court ruling from 13 years ago, and ROSS will not only search for the case in an instant -- without contest or complaint -- but it'll offer opinions in plain language about the old ruling's relevance to the case at hand. Just about the only thing it can't do is fetch coffee. Not that anyone should blame it, seeing as ROSS is a piece of artificial intelligence software.

A well-dressed humanoid not named Ross. Lawyers can get a bad reputation for being slimy and conniving, but ROSS has neither of those qualities. Ask ROSS to look up an obscure court ruling from 13 years ago, and ROSS will not only search for the case in an instant - without contest or complaint - but it'll offer opinions in plain language about the old ruling's relevance to the case at hand. Just about the only thing it can't do is fetch coffee. Not that anyone should blame it, seeing as ROSS is a piece of artificial intelligence software.

A well-dressed humanoid not named Ross. Lawyers often get a bad reputation for being slimy and conniving (deservedly or not), but ROSS has neither of those qualities. Ask ROSS to look up an obscure court ruling from 13 years ago, and ROSS will not only search for the case in an instant - without contest or complaint - but it'll offer opinions in plain language about the old ruling's relevance to the case at hand. Just about the only thing it can't do is fetch coffee. Not that anyone should blame it, seeing as ROSS is a piece of artificial intelligence software.

Skye Gould/Tech InsiderA well-dressed humanoid not named Ross. Lawyers often get a bad reputation for being slimy and conniving (deservedly or not), but ROSS has neither of those qualities. Ask ROSS to look up an obscure court ruling from 13 years ago, and ROSS will not only search for the case in an instant -- without contest or complaint -- but it'll offer opinions in plain language about the old ruling's relevance to the case at hand. Just about the only thing it can't do is fetch coffee. Not that anyone should blame it, seeing as ROSS is a piece of artificial intelligence software.

Skye Gould/Tech InsiderA well-dressed humanoid not named Ross. Lawyers can get a bad reputation for being slimy and conniving, but ROSS has neither of those qualities. Ask ROSS to look up an obscure court ruling from 13 years ago, and ROSS will not only search for the case in an instant -- without contest or complaint -- but it'll offer opinions in plain language about the old ruling's relevance to the case at hand. Just about the only thing it can't do is fetch coffee. Not that anyone should blame it, seeing as ROSS is a piece of artificial intelligence software.

Ross, the world's first artificially intelligent attorney, has its first official law firm. Baker & Hostetler announced that they will be employing Ross for its bankruptcy practice, currently comprised of almost 50 lawyers.

Law firm Baker & Hostetler has announced that they are employing IBM's AI Ross to handle their bankruptcy practice, which at the moment consists of nearly 50 lawyers. According to CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda, other firms have also signed licenses with Ross, and they will also be making announcements shortly. Ross, "the world's first artificially intelligent attorney" built on IBM's cognitive computer Watson, was designed to read and understand language, postulate hypotheses when asked questions, research, and then generate responses (along with references and citations) to back up its conclusions. Ross also learns from experience, gaining speed and knowledge the more you interact with it. "You ask your questions in plain English, as you would a colleague, and ROSS then reads through the entire body of law and returns a cited answer and topical readings from legislation, case law and secondary sources to get you up-to-speed quickly," the website says.

With the best human player of boardgame Go being defeated this month by Google software, lawyers shouldn't make the mistake of believing their skills are beyond the reach of artificial intelligence (AI), write Stéphane Leriche and Michael Stojanovic. In early March, Google's DeepMind and its AlphaGo software beat the best human player of the ancient Chinese board game, Go, in a series of much-hyped matches. AI-powered legal tools are already a reality, and the success of AlphaGo demonstrates that the technology to make these tools better now exists. IBM's Watson cognitive computer won the TV game show Jeopardy! in 2011. Watson's question-answering technology has since been adapted to produce ROSS, a legal research virtual assistant that its developers promote as a'super intelligent attorney'.