Business
AI and the legal sector, Chrissie Lightfoot - author, Kira, Neota, HighQ, Leverton, Ross and RAVN-iManage, entrepreneurialism. Stephen Turner, the host of Lawyers of Tomorrow, speaks with Chrissie Lightfoot, author, thought leader, investor, entrepreneur, mentor and government advisor. Chrissie is one of most influential thinkers and legal tech entrepreneurs in the legal industry and has done so much to change the way lawyers think about themselves and their clients.In 2010, Chrissie shot to fame with the publication of her first book, The Naked Lawyer, which invites lawyers to reach out and relate with clients (ROAR), to empathise, use social media, solve problems and generate more business by being entrepreneurial. Chrissie explains that she had been frustrated as a client consuming legal services, where she experienced poor customer service and a legal sector at least 10 years behind other sectors in terms of its use of technology. Chrissie therefore decided to become a solicitor to learn how the legal sector worked from the inside with a view to then working out how she could improve the functioning of the industry. The Naked Lawyer was tremendously successful and Chrissie consulted with law firms around the world on implementation of the ROAR model. In 2013, Chrissie was honoured as `Legal Professional of the Year' and a 'Top 100 International Executive`.Chrissie explains that, when thinking about the topic of her first novel, she had wanted to write about legal technology and innovation but that she realised that these ideas were too advanced for publication in 2010. However, by 2014 things had changed, with the legal sector now being more receptive to ideas such as AI and robot lawyers, and Chrissie published Tomorrow’s Naked Lawyer, predicting how the legal industry will be transformed by the adoption of legal technology, including AI, and new business models.Stephen and Chrissie discuss how the predictions made in Tomorrow's Naked Lawyer are happening now which means that lawyers now need to future proof themselves by reskilling for a new legal market. Since robotic automations and AI will soon be performing many tasks previously performed by lawyers, future lawyers need to focus on those tasks which the bots and automations is will not be able to perform as well as humans – for example, tasks involving empathy, negotiation and a refined understanding of human behaviour. Stephen and Chrissie discuss how it is crucial for lawyers to become entrepreneurial, to think like their clients, explore new business models and innovations and to be creative with the law. "Great lawyers understand business" - says Chrissie.Chrissie and Stephen discuss the way legal technology companies and law firms are now cooperating on an unprecedented scale. Technology companies such as Kira, Neota, HighQ, Leverton, Ross and RAVN-iManage have realised that through cooperation with law firms and with each other they can achieve so much more - for example, end-to-end technology integrations which cover the vertical delivery of legal services. Chrissie explains that technology companies understand that the focus must always be on the client and because of this they have found considerable success by marketing their legal products directly to corporations and in-house counsel.Chrissie and Stephen then get technical and explain some of the technologies existing under the umbrella term ‘AI’, discussing machine learning, robotic automations, expert systems and the vertical integrations which will mean that in the future 50% of traditional law firms will morph into other things, for example, alternative business entities created to provide non-traditional delivery of legal services.In Part Two of this podcast, Chrissie and Stephen continue their discussion of new legal technology and innovations, including discussing Chrissie's project, Robot Lisa, which is currently developing a suite of property tools for businesses and consumers. Chrissie and Stephen also give practical advice on how lawyers and law firms can harness the news technologies, begin to experiment with them and scale their legal knowledge, for example by leveraging expert systems that are pre-programmed with legal knowledge and can then exercise judgement and reasoning. Chrissie and Stephen also discuss the effect that advances in technology in general will affect society.