Technology is revolutionizing the work we do and how we do it. Increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are taking over menial and repetitive tasks, leaving humans to concentrate on work that requires critical thinking. But as machines become better at imitating human intelligence, they're beginning to do more and more thinking for us.

In a landmark study, 20 top US corporate lawyers with decades of experience in corporate law and contract review were pitted against an AI. Their task was to spot issues in five Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), which are a contractual basis for most business deals. The study, carried out with leading legal academics and experts, saw the LawGeex AI achieve an average 94% accuracy rate, higher than the lawyers who achieved an average rate of 85%. It took the lawyers an average of 92 minutes to complete the NDA issue spotting, compared to 26 seconds for the LawGeex AI. The longest time taken by a lawyer to complete the test was 156 minutes, and the shortest time was 51 minutes.

LONG hours have been the bane of the legal profession for ages; few of them involve thrilling courtroom antics. As a junior corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm in New York, John Bick remembers spending most of his waking hours poring over contracts looking for clauses that could complicate or kill off a deal. Even once he became a partner he still had to pitch in on due diligence for large transactions. In 2015 nearly a third of British lawyers were looking to leave the profession, according to the job searches of more than 1,000 of them by Life Productions, a career-change consultancy, perhaps because of the drudgery. Such dissatisfaction may recede in future.

Artificial intelligence has overtaken lawyers for the first time in a staple of the legal profession -- accurately spotting risks in everyday business contracts. In a new study, LawGeex has achieved an average 94% accuracy rate at surfacing risks in Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), one of the most common legal agreements used in business. This compares to an average of 85% for experienced lawyers.The study pitted the LawGeex AI solution against 20 US-trained top corporate lawyers with decades of experience, specifically in reviewing NDAs. The study was overseen and administered by independent lawyer Christopher Ray. Additional consulting academics included Yonatan Aumann, Professor in the Department of Computer Science, at Bar Ilan University.