Domestic and foreign law firms actively utilize AI
Review contracts without human intervention
Average lawyer workload reduced by 48%
“It will be a test bed for AI technology”
Courts and police are also active in introducing
British company Luminance recently launched an artificial intelligence (AI) program that completes everything from contract review to negotiation in one go, without any human intervention. An AI specializing in negotiation reviews the contents of the contract and then exchanges the contract with the other AI. If there is a problem clause, mark it in red and replace it with a more appropriate one. Human lawyers only participate in the final signing step.
The influence of AI appears to be growing rapidly in the once conservative legal field. There is speculation in the legal world that AI will replace a significant portion of the work performed by lawyers at existing law firms.
AI technology to help lawyers
According to the legal tech industry, an American law firm reduced attorney workload by an average of 48% after introducing the services of legal tech company Kira Systems. The effect was that AI analyzed and visualized unfair clauses in the contract that the lawyer needed to review.
Korean law firms are already entrusting simple tasks such as document classification and foreign language translation to AI. Sejong Law Firm uses AI to share legal documents such as opinions and complaints. Yulchon introduced an AI system that automatically extracts text from videos. There are many domestic startup services targeting the lawyer market. Elbox, which operates an AI judgment search service, is used by half of domestic lawyers. Docubrain, Intellicon Lab’s document analysis solution, is also a service used by many law firms.
The reason why AI is so hot in the legal field is because of the nature of work that involves a lot of document work. The industry predicts that the legal industry will become a test bed for AI technology. The expected size of the legal AI market in 2027 is $46.5 billion (approximately 62 trillion won). Goldman Sachs also analyzed in a recent report that 44% of all work in the legal industry will be automated. There are also expectations that AI development will revolutionize the legal industry. “It will increase access to litigation for poor people, revolutionize legal research, and help resolve lawsuits quickly and inexpensively,” said U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
However, controversy over AI lawyers always follows. Not long ago, an app called Iavoca developed by an entrepreneur from Lyon, France, became an issue. The promotional slogan that said, ‘What would take a lawyer a year to solve in just one minute’ was problematic. The French legal profession was turned upside down by the emergence of an AI lawyer who provides legal advice for 69 euros per year. The developer decided to change the name of the app to ‘Intelligence Legal’, excluding Avoca (lawyer).
“Resolving hallucination is a challenge”
There is no disagreement that AI will reduce the time required to summarize and organize legal documents. ChatGPT and Google Bard can draft a complaint according to the entered instructions without separately learning Korean legal data.
Even conservative courts and police are becoming proactive in using AI. The National Court Administration is preparing to introduce ‘Trial Support Assistant AI’ (tentative name) as a way to solve the problem of trial delays. The National Police Agency is also considering introducing an AI system so that citizens can easily write complaints using AI.
However, AI’s ‘hallucination’ (hallucination/plausible lie) problem is a task that must be solved. The industry is demanding that Korean courts disclose decision data to resolve hallucination and advance technology. The enormous amount of rulings written based on laws, precedents, and papers is said to be a ‘treasure of AI learning.’ However, only a small portion of the rulings are made public in Korea. Because of the strict anonymization, it looks like ciphertext.
Min Myeong-gi, CEO of Law & Good, said, “Except for a very small number of cases, we have to pay 1,000 won per ruling to purchase it,” and added, “Because it costs a lot to build a database, developing legal AI is not easy.”