人工智能將顛覆律師行業

Linklaters and Pinsent Masons have become the latest law firms to invest in artificial intelligence, as the legal profession tries to automate the mundane tasks that have traditionally been the preserve of junior lawyers.

法律業正嘗試讓傳統上由初級律師承擔的枯燥工作實現自動化，年利達(Linklaters)與品誠梅森(Pinsent Masons)就是最新一批投資人工智能的律師事務所。

Linklaters has developed Verifi, a computer programme that can sift through 14 UK and European regulatory registers to check client names for banks. The company said it could process thousands of names overnight.

年利達律師事務所開發了電腦程序Verifi，可以篩查14家英國及歐洲監管登記機構的材料，爲銀行覈查客戶姓名。該公司表示，這一程序一夜時間可以處理幾千個名字。

Edward Chan, banking partner at Linklaters, said: “Previously it would have taken a trained junior lawyer an average of 12 minutes to search a single customer name.

年利達銀行業合夥人Edward Chan說：“以前，受過訓練的初級律師檢索一位客戶的姓名平均需要12分鐘。”

“AI is an indispensible tool for coping with the ever-growing amounts of data which lawyers have to handle in running complex matters. Our lawyers are not engineers or data scientists. Good solid legal skills remain what we look for in our lawyers.”

“律師在處理複雜事務時不得不面對日益龐大的數據量，人工智能已成爲處理這些數據的必要工具。我們的律師不是工程師，也不是數據科學家。優秀、紮實的法律技能仍是我們的律師應具備的。”

Pinsent Masons has developed a programme that reads and analyses clauses in loan agreements. Its TermFrame system also helps guide lawyers through transactions and point them towards the correct precedents at each stage of a process.

品誠梅森律師事務所開發了一個可以讀取並分析貸款協議條款的程序。其TermFrame系統還可以在律師處理事務的過程中提供幫助，在進程的每一階段指引他們參考恰當的先例。

Another law firm, Dentons, has set up NextLaw Labs, a virtual company which looks at the application of technology with the law. It has invested in ROSS, an IBM Watson-powered legal adviser app that streamlines legal research, saving lawyers’ time and clients’ money. ROSS is currently being pilot-tested at Dentons and approximately 20 other law firms.

德同國際律師事務所(Dentons)創建了虛擬公司NextLaw Labs，致力於將技術應用在法律事務上。NextLaw投資了一款基於IBM的沃森(Watson)超級計算機系統、名爲ROSS的法律顧問應用，該應用可以簡化法律檢索、節省律師的時間及客戶的資金。ROSS目前正在德同等大約20家律所進行測試。

Hodge, Jones & Allen, a law firm, has worked with academics from University College London to create software that assesses the merits of personal injury cases.

Hodge Jones & Allen律師事務所與倫敦大學學院(University College London)的科研人員合作，開發了評估人身傷害案件是非曲直的軟件。

Professor Richard Susskind, a technology adviser to the Lord Chief Justice, has predicted radical change in the legal sector, pointing out that intelligent search systems could now outperform junior lawyers and paralegals in reviewing large sets of documents and selecting the most relevant.

最高法院首席法官(Lord Chief Justice)的技術顧問理查德•薩斯坎德教授(Richard Susskind)曾預測，法律業將發生根本性變化，並指出，在查閱大量文檔並選取最具相關性的材料方面，智能檢索系統如今可以比初級律師和律師助理做得更好。

He told a legal conference last month that the legal profession had five years to reinvent itself from being legal advisers to legal technologists and criticised law schools for “churning out 20th-century lawyers”.

上月，他在一場法律會議上表示，律師這一行有5年時間進行自我重塑——從法律顧問轉變爲法律技術專家。他還批評法學院“培養20世紀律師”。

A recent study by Deloitte suggested that technology has already contributed to a reduction of about 31,000 jobs in the legal sector, including roles such as legal secretaries and a further 39 per cent of jobs were at “high risk” of being made redundant by machines in the next two decades.

德勤(Deloitte)最近的一項研究表明，技術進步已導致法律業減少了約3.1萬個工作崗位（包括法務祕書），而且還有39%的工作崗位在未來20年將面臨被機器淘汰的“高風險”。

There has been speculation that law is ripe for “Uberisation”, becoming the next target of technological disruption.

有人推斷，法律行業將迎來“優步化”(Uberisation)，成爲被技術顛覆的下一個目標。

One smaller firm, Riverview Law, has partnered with the computer science department at Liverpool University to work on artifical intelligence products.

規模較小的律所Riverview Law已與利物浦大學(Liverpool University)的計算機科學系合作研發人工智能產品。

Riverview is setting-up a separate technology business to exploit its software and the intellectual property that it has and is creating. It has launched a virtual assistant Kim designed to help legal teams make quicker and better decisions.

Riverview Law正在創建一家獨立的技術公司，以更好地利用其已擁有以及正在開發的軟件和知識產權。該公司推出了一款名爲Kim的虛擬助手系統，旨在幫助律師團隊更快、更好地作出決策。

Karl Chapman, chief executive of Riverview, said Kim has three varying levels of complexity including one level where a lawyer can ask it to suggest the best order to renegotiate a series of corporate contracts.

Riverview Law首席執行官卡爾•查普曼(Karl Chapman)表示，Kim有三個複雜程度等級，在其中一個等級，Kim可以給出律師重新談判一系列公司合同的最佳順序。

Many believe that AI will simply automate more routine parts of legal work so that lawyers focus on more complex, high value areas of client work.

許多人認爲，人工智能不過將使法律工作中的常規環節實現自動化，以使律師專注於客戶服務中比較複雜、高價值的領域。

“I would liken it to mathematicians calculating sums on slide rulers before computers. Computers didn’t do away with mathematicians who are probably more highly valued now than they were before,” said Orlando Conetta, a computer scientist and head of research and development at Pinsents.

計算機科學家、品誠梅森律師事務所研發主管奧蘭多•科納塔(Orlando Conetta)表示：“我把這比作電腦出現前數學家使用滑動標尺計算總數。電腦並沒有淘汰數學家，他們如今可能比以前更受重視。”