As technology continues to advance, the legal industry is also evolving. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automatic Voice Recognition (AVR) are becoming increasingly prevalent in the field and are changing the way junior lawyers work.
In this blog post, I take a closer look at how AI and AVR can assist junior lawyers in their daily tasks and how they can free up time for more important and value-adding tasks. Moreover, I will examine how these technology can help to reduce costs and increase access to justice.
To begin, let's take a look at a breakdown of tasks that a typical 40 hour workweek for a junior lawyer doing litigation might look like, with an estimate of how many of those hours could potentially be done by AI, specifically natural language processing models, with the assistance of an operator and how many hours could be done by Automatic Voice Recognition (AVR):
It's important to note that this is just an estimate based on my analysis and not a scientific study.
This analysis is drawn from my common sense analysis and my tech knowledge and insights over the last few months and my many years of being, working with, supervising and employing junior lawyers.
As we can see from this table, AI can assist junior lawyers in tasks such as legal research, document review, and contract drafting.
These tasks are typically time-consuming for junior lawyers, but with the help of AI, they can be done more efficiently and accurately.
This can free up 22 hours a week for more important and value-adding tasks.
AVR can also play a major role in the legal field, by transcribing audio recordings of meetings and hearings, which can be a time-consuming task for junior lawyers, to sit in meetings making notes.
This could save an additional 2 hours a week, allowing junior lawyers to focus on more important and value-adding tasks such as analysis and decision making.
The benefits of AI and AVR go beyond just saving time, they also have the potential to reduce costs and increase access to justice for clients in dramatic ways.
High legal costs can be a barrier to justice for many individuals and businesses.
By using AI to efficiently complete tasks such as legal research, document review, and contract drafting, and AVR for transcribing audio recordings, legal professionals can help to make the legal process more efficient and affordable, which can increase access to justice for many people.
While these technologies are not meant to replace human judgement, they are designed to assist and make the legal process more efficient. This means that junior lawyers will have more time to focus on higher-level tasks and provide better service to clients.
As the legal industry continues to evolve, it's important for junior lawyers to be aware of the advancements in technology and to embrace the opportunities they provide.
With AI and AVR, we can work smarter, not harder, and provide even better service to our clients while also helping to reduce costs and increase access to justice.
It's an exciting time for the legal industry and I can't wait to see how these technologies will continue to shape and improve the way we work.