Chatbots have been around since the 1960s and coders have been trying to pass the Turing test ever since, creating increasingly sophisticated iterations of natural language processing (NLP) software. A recent episode, where a Google engineer was sacked for claiming that the search engine's chatbot generator software known as LaMDA was sentient, perhaps demonstrates the leaps and bounds that NLP has made over the past few years. However, it's only with the public release of a new chatbot called ChatGPT that the potential of NLP has been taken seriously by the wider public. ChatGPT is a conversational piece of software released by OpenAI, designed to answer questions posed in natural language and even have a dialogue with users. It has been trained on a multitude of online data from Wikipedia to Reddit, although the information is only correct up until 2021. As well as answering general queries and therefore being a potential threat to Google, it also has the ability to write bespoke articles on any topic which is sparking off existential debates amongst academics and professional writers.

In the words of former GE CEO, Jack Welch, "If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete." This CLE covers how technology has changed the practice of law and how we can (and should) use analytics to our transactional and litigation advantage. Examine how analytics have changed our application of model rules of professional responsibility. Understand how analytics and artificial intelligence are applied in both professional and legal world. Examine how to use and apply analytics in a legal case.

ArtificiaI intelligence (AI) may soon render many jobs obsolete. Remember how popular one-hour photo shops were in the 1980s and into the mid-1990s? That's just the tip of the tech iceberg, as AI now seems to be gunning to take over the legal world. The UK-based Law Society noted in a study earlier this year: "Over the longer term, the number of jobs in the legal services sector will be increasingly affected by automation of legal services functions. This could mean that by 2038 total employment in the sector could be 20% less than it would otherwise have been, with a loss of 78,000 jobs -- equal to 67,000 full-time equivalent jobs -- compared to if productivity growth continued at its current rate."

When you mention artificial intelligence (AI), plenty of images come to mind, thanks in large part to Hollywood depictions of the rise of the machines. While robots have yet to take over the world, many less threatening examples of AI have dominated our culture, from our everyday interactions with Siri or Alexa, to Google's self-driving car, or to Ken Jennings losing to Watson on Jeopardy! In reality, AI has already worked its way into our lives in ways that are far less sensational or even noticeable. Today's definition of AI is fluid, and the countless companies offering AI solutions in the market have as many different definitions for the concept as there are products. In short, the term "AI" is widely used to describe any computing function that mimics human intelligence or thinking.

If ever there was an industry ripe for disruption it is surely the legal profession. Unlike many other sectors, however, it has tended to be a little reticent about embracing technology to innovate. After all, the traditional way of doing business for legal firms has been extremely profitable. The model typically involves a bunch of low-paid minions doing grunt work while a few partners earn eye-wateringly high sums. Moreover, many legal professionals look upon technology with fear and who could blame them when a forecast from Deloitte published last year predicted that more than 100,000 jobs in the sector could be automated within the next 20 years.

It's been an incredible year for the'New Wave' of legal technology and Artificial Lawyer has hopefully been able to bring you some of the key moments in this evolutionary journey that is unfolding week by week all around the world. Now, as we head toward 2018, many of the leading players and commentators in the legal AI, legal bot and data analysis world have been asked to give their views on what has taken place and what will happen next. Plus, next year there will be predictions from the world of smart contracts and legal blockchain, (Hi, Clause, Integra Ledger and IBM's Cognitive Legal team, to name a few!) Artificial Lawyer asked an array of experts to name what was the biggest development for legal AI and the New Wave of legal technology this year, and what they expected to see happen in 2018. They were invited to respond with text or images to illustrate their views, and if they were up for it, a haiku or longer poem. Naturally, we couldn't fit everyone in – the legal tech world is just so massive now – but hopefully you'll find this collective wisdom both inspiring and thought-provoking – and fun – I know Artificial Lawyer did. Biggest development of 2017: 'I think the most significant thing was how mainstream legal AI became – mass adoption by firms and NewLaw, and more focus on integrations, grown up security requirements, APIs and the like.' Biggest development of 2018: 'I think we're going to see more news about wider ML applicability, not just NLP/ML for litigation document review, contract review in diligence and in-house contract review (the primary use cases to date).

If you have recently received a parking ticket, you can use the services of a robot lawyer to help. The robot lawyer asks as series of questions like where the ticket was issued, a description of what happened and within a few minutes, you can have a 500-word letter to send to the city to contest the parking ticket. This bot lawyer has, so far, helped overturn more than 200,000 parking tickets. If you are looking at getting a divorce, wevorce can help. Wevorce's web-based platform allows couples to go through a collaborative divorce -- one in which both partners work together to decide how to split assets and figure out how to coparent.

If you look at the news, it looks like the entire world will be run by artificial intelligence (AI) in just a decade or two. One of the latest conversations has to do with the role of AI in the legal world. Is there a future here? The legal industry is still based on the same principles that it was decades ago, but it's undergone some pretty significant changes over the past few years. One area, in particular, that's worth exploring is AI.

Altman Weil principal Thomas Clay has spent over 30 years as a strategic consultant to law firms, so there's not much that surprises him about the industry anymore. If that isn't enough to give him an insider's view of the industry, his company created the Law Firms in Transition Flash Survey and he co-authors the Altman Weil Report every year. That said, a bonus question at the end of the 2017 survey gave him reason to raise an eyebrow at the results. The bonus question in this year's survey: "Technology tools that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, like Watson and Ross, are beginning to be adopted by some law firms. What is your firm's stance on the use of legal AI tools?" "Honestly, I'm amazed at how little AI has affected law firms so far."

When AI first reached the ears of the legal market some years ago there was a flurry of stories about the end of lawyers. For years afterward and with Pavlov dogs-like automation any mention of legal AI summoned up the panicked refrain: 'The end of lawyers is coming, the end of lawyers is coming!' This was until law firms and corporates actually started to make use of legal AI systems, especially in the last two years and even more so last year. The clichéd refrain, now exposed to the cleansing light of real experience, seemed to die away upon contact. It turns out there were no androids or already out of date screen grabs from the 2004 Will Smith movie'iRobot' based on the late great Asimov novel.