AI set to be transformative for legal

Senior associate Marko Trivun said while artificial intelligence is more useful in some areas of law compare to others, he still believes that sort of technology will be transformative for the industry.

Marko's comments came in a Law Times article that discusses the impact AI is having on Bay Street. He says the impression that AI is “coming to take Bay Street jobs while lawyers dig in their heels” is not true in his experience.

“You could have the impression that AI has swept Bay Street and the law profession in general. My firm is very interested in improving how we work,” he told Law Times.

“But I still think that impression would be false…. There is lot of promise to it, but I think most lawyers would probably tell you they use zero to very little true AI software in their practice on any regular basis, with some notable exceptions.”

Marko said some tools have quickly become standard in e-discovery and document review, but other areas haven’t adopted the technology as quickly.

He said one of the limits to using these tools is the “unstructured” data sets that existing in the legal industry, which can make it “difficult to sort through using just mathematical functions”.

“I think if you presented law firms with a really compelling working product, like you saw in e-discovery, you would have uptake faster than the stereotype would have you believe,” he said.

“Smartphones have changed how lawyers think. Lawyers are motivated to work efficiently—financially and personally... it’s exciting for everyone, and it is bleeding into how we work, but more has to happen before a lawyer can clock in and go straight to their AI tools. I don’t think lawyers will attest to doing that on a daily basis.”

You can read more on this topic in Marko’s piece “Intelligent transformation: AI in the legal industry” in the Q3 edition of the Torys Quarterly.