Law Firms Experimenting With AI

Chatbots are already being used in a variety of industries — and now those in the legal industry are finding ways to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI).

Last year, a chatbot called DoNotPay, that helps users appeal parking tickets for free in the U.K., became available in the United States. The chatbot — which has been described by its founder as one of the world’s first robot lawyers — overturned more than $3 million U.K. parking fines in a few months.

Now, according to Financial Times, law firms in Asia-Pacific are utilizing chatbots to improve their efficiency. For instance, Parker is the first Australian law firm chatbot that simulates human conversation. It can give basic answers to questions about changes to the law on data protection and privacy. Parker was designed to help businesses with new legislation that was implemented in February, which states companies must notify customers about data breaches or face fines of up to A$2.1 million.

Parker was created by Nick Abrahams, the global head of technology and innovation at Norton Rose Fulbright, and the technology and privacy lawyer Edward Odendaal. The chatbot was developed with IBM’s Watson AI platform and natural language processing.

“The tools are quite intuitive now,” Abrahams said. “Lawyers who like coding? That’s great — but they don’t need to be able to code.”

In fact, most of the tools needed to develop the bot was legal knowledge of the subject, and a small amount of technical programming expertise. Clients can ask the bot questions, and if they need more detailed information, Parker will direct them to three fixed-price legal advice packages. It sold A$15,000 worth of different types of advice in its first 24 hours.

Abrahams aims to develop chatbots for use by in-house legal teams so they can answer standard, but time-consuming, questions within their businesses.