The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on legal practitioners in law firms and legal publishers.

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions currently have the capabilities to perform tasks quicker, more accurately and consistently than legal professionals. This could result in inducing the opinion in employers at private law firms and legal publishers that AI software may have a quicker return on investment and a lower total cost of ownership. The purpose of this study is to discover whether the availability of yield-producing, affordable AI technologies in the legal industry could lead to legal practitioners and their roles becoming redundant. An explanatory quantitative study was established using a cross-sectional descriptive survey design to achieve the objectives of the research. A self-administered structured questionnaire was developed and delivered via hardcopy and e-mail to 102 legal professionals by means of snowball sampling. These respondents were drawn from 19 different private law firms, legal publishers and legal departments at private corporations. Statistical analysis performed on the data collected was analysed and interpreted using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that there was a general awareness of advancement in certain legal AI solutions and there was a general agreement that legal professionals would advocate that their companies invest in AI Solutions if it produced additional accurate work yield while being cost-effective. The final revelation was that legal professionals agreed that AI solutions were not yet mature enough to replace human legal professionals. Regardless of this sentiment, they felt that they and their companies, would hire fewer legal professionals presented with the opportunity of value-adding legal AI solutions. Recommendations include legal professionals investigating the advancement and availability of AI solutions for the purposes of utilising it to strategically augment and bolster their job functions. Further recommendations include investigations into understanding their company’s current capability and strength in comparison to their competitors and to understand how AI would augment their company performance to provide additional value in terms of insight and improve turn-around times. The final recommendation was for South African tertiary institutions of higher learning to start incorporating the topics of AI and Law into its Law Degree curriculum in an effort to make students aware of the advancement of AI in the area of Law and how it will affect their lives. The importance of this study is in the opinion of the professionals surveyed who believe that there was a strong possibility that they and their companies would hire fewer legal professionals if there was the availability of an economically beneficial legal AI solution which produced accurate, consistent, yield-producing output.