So the law firm partner of the future will be the leader of a team, “and more than one of the players will be a machine,” said Michael Mills, a lawyer<br />and chief strategy officer of a legal technology start-up called Neota Logic.<br />Two obvious factors have led to that downsizing: tightened legal spending and digital technologies<br />that automated some tasks, like document searches, said Mr. Yoon, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.<br />Ask for the case most similar to the one you have and the Ross program, which taps some of IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence technology, reads through thousands of cases<br />and delivers a ranked list of the most relevant ones, Mr. Salazar said.<br />Artificial intelligence has stirred great interest,<br />but law firms today are using it mainly in “search-and-find type tasks” in electronic discovery, due diligence and contract review, Mr. Allgrove said.<br />But recent research and even the people working on the software meant to automate legal work say the adoption of A. I.<br />in law firms will be a slow, task-by-task process.<br />For years, labor economists said routine work like a factory job could be reduced to a set of rules that could be computerized.<br />Instead, it took two and a half years to refine the software so it could readily identify concepts such as noncompete contract clauses<br />and change-of-control, said Mr. Hudek, chief technology officer of Kira Systems.<br />Technology will unbundle aspects of legal work over the next decade or two rather than the next year or two, legal experts say.<br />“For the time being, experience like mine is something people are willing to pay for,” Mr. Yoon said.
