Digitization is already here. By today’s standards, every legal professional possesses his personal computer and smartphone and utilizes standard software. But is this already a digital transformation? Digital transformation, i.e. digitalization, does not only mean converting analog into digital information, but rather the integration of digital technology into all areas of business in the form of a fundamental transformation of how businesses operate. Therefore, it has the potential to include a positive paradigm shift towards a smart and technological world that emphasizes the creative input of human work. The resulting gains in efficiency were, however, accompanied by a change in expectations of employers, clients and business partners. The workload of (legal) professionals has increased even further because the possibility of automation raises expectations and the need for automation. The hope that digitization would enable humans to work differently with a shift from fast-paced mundane to creative and quality work has so far been proven wrong. Will a true digitalization in the sense of a paradigm shift and digital transformation bring us closer to turning that vision into reality?
Digitization has led to an abundance of information. This poses the difficult problem of information overload. The distinction between relevant and irrelevant data has become one of the main challenges of our informational age. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers the possibility to cause a paradigm shift, freeing humans from simple and repetitive tasks by automation and informational analysis.
Automation is already in widespread use. For example, legal documents can be created automatically, eliminating common human mistakes such as misjudgments, omissions, missing references or even simple typos. Or document-intake including understanding its content and automated triage can be carried out by bots without much human contribution. This enables humans to channel their energy into more creative and complex tasks like designing legal processes or complex negotiations.
Informational analysis, however, is still a bottleneck. AI can already process millions of datasets. However, humans have a hard time using the information an AI system processes efficiently as they often lack a clear understanding of the results of the analysis and how it was calculated. AI and human intelligence “perceive” our reality differently. AI “thinks” in correlations, whereas humans mainly use causality to link data (
Leetaru, A Reminder That Machine Learning Is About Correlations Not Causation,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/01/15/a-reminder-that-machine-learning-is-about-correlations-not-causation/?sh=535c6fc96161). We can overcome this hurdle by using visualization of the results and well-designed processes. Visualization can make it easier for humans to use the information provided by AI-processing and thus bridge the gap between the difference in AI’s and human’s perception of data.
In summary, digitalization, in particular technologies such as AI, have the potential to bring a paradigm shift upon human work. Humans may be relieved from repetitive work, allowing them to be more creative, and therefore more humane. What will be most important is to be innovative instead of productive.
