A Legal Challenge to Algorithmic Recommendations

Regulation required.

A Legal Challenge to Algorithmic Recommendations

By Pamela Samuelson

Communications of the ACM, March 2023, Vol. 66 No. 3, Pages 32-34

Credit: Andrij Borys Associates

A young American student, Nohemi Gonzalez, was one of 149 people murdered in Paris in 2015 by ISIS terrorists. Her family blames Google for her death, claiming that YouTube's algorithms provided material support to the terrorist organization by recommending violent and radicalizing ISIS videos to its users based on their previous viewing histories. (The Gonzalez complaint levies the same charges against Twitter and Facebook, but to keep things simple, this column refers only to Google.)

Gonzalez' family sued Google for damages for this wrongful death. Both a trial and an appellate court agreed with Google that it could not be held liable for this tragic death under a federal immunity shield widely known as § 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). However, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear Gonzalez' appeal and consider whether YouTube's algorithmic recommendations are beyond the shelter of § 230.... '

EU Digital Strategy

 So many directions to regulate.    Note considering the influence US Law

The EU digital strategy: The impact of data privacy on global business

McKinseu:  March 1, 2023 | Commentary

By  Daniel Mikkelsen, Sebastian Scheurle,   Henning Soller , and Malin Strandell-Jansson

New data regulations from the European Union require organizational attention, and three key steps can help navigate the data privacy landscape.

The data regulations in the European Union (EU) have recently received significant attention specifically due to the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation and the rulings around Schrems II—whereby the Court of Justice of the European Union found that the protection of personal data had limitations due to domestic law in the United States—as well as the access and use by US public authorities of personal data transferred from the EU, and recent developments such as e-privacy.

While these developments have led to major changes in data privacy, one of the other goals of the regulation—to establish a market for data and facilitate data exchange between companies—has not been reached to date.

This lack of action has led to the potential for further regulatory activity to define an agenda for how to uplift the data capabilities of European companies, create a market for data, and regulate activities around AI. These activities are typically summarized as the EU digital strategy. While regulation adds further requirements and obligations to any data-enabled business, it also creates an opportunity for competitive advantages for those that best derisk their data transformations.

The EU digital strategy offers organizations both challenges and opportunities, but these regulations will likely continue to evolve, so organizations should remain aligned with the regulatory process. ... ' 

A Law Firm and Generative AI

Legal direction make sense, if the results are good.   Note uses ChatGPT.\ model. 

Hello, Harvey: This Elite Biglaw Firm Is The First To Partner With 'Game-Changing' AI Chatbot

This firm is giving the robots the chance to come for lawyers' jobs -- and do them better.

By STACI ZARETSKY    in Abovethelaw  on February 17, 2023 at 4:16 PM

Robot using a futuristic interface.  This announcement marks a new era for A&O and the legal industry. Harvey AI is not just another platform, but a game-changer that will enable us to deliver unprecedented value, efficiency and innovation to our clients. We are proud to be the first law firm to partner with Harvey AI. We share their vision of using technology to enhance and transform legal services.

— Wim Dejonghe, a senior partner at Allen & Overy, in a statement concerning the Biglaw firm’s integration of Harvey, an innovative AI platform that uses the same model as ChatGPT, but has been enhanced for legal work. Harvey operates in “multiple languages” and can automate legal work with “unmatched efficiency, quality and intelligence.” According to a press release from A&O, “Whilst the output needs careful review by an A&O lawyer, Harvey can help generate insights, recommendations and predictions based on large volumes of data, enabling lawyers to deliver faster, smarter and more cost-effective solutions to their clients.”   ... ' 

Computer Scientist Says AI 'Artist' Deserves Its Own Copyrights

More on this ...  Art in particular mentioned here.  

Computer Scientist Says AI 'Artist' Deserves Its Own Copyrights

Reuters, Blake Brittain, January 11, 2023

Computer scientist Stephen Thaler has requested the Washington, DC, District Court to rule his Creativity Machine artificial intelligence (AI) system deserves copyrights for art it produces. Thaler asked the court to rescind a U.S. Copyright Office ruling decreeing that copyrightable creative works can only be human-made. His lawyer, Ryan Abbott of Brown Neri Smith & Khan, said the case has a "real financial importance" that may have been previously overlooked, and the protection of AI-created art would serve the goals of copyright law. Said Thaler in his court filing, "The fact that various courts have referred to creative activity in human-centric terms, based on the fact that creativity has traditionally been human-centric and romanticized, is very different than there being a legal requirement for human creativity."  ... ' 

Looking at Global CyberLaw

Involved with this some time ago, continues to increase in complexity. 

Cyberlaw: Where We Are and What's On the Horizon  in ACM News

By Karen Emslie,     Commissioned by CACM Staff, November 29, 2022

Talita Dias said viewing cyberspace as a new 'space' is misleading.

Around 120 countries have adopted data protection and privacy legislation and many have introduced new laws or amended existing ones to apply to cyberspace, often modelling them on Europe's General Data Protection Regulation.

Cyberlaw deals with the legalities of our interactions with technologies and one another in cyberspace. It is an umbrella term that encompasses matters as diverse as cybersecurity, data privacy, social media, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and cryptocurrency.

New products, platforms, capabilities, and threats are constantly emerging. It is the job of lawmakers to determine how they fit into existing legal frameworks, and to create new legislation when they do n0t. However, establishing agreements has proven challenging at the country level and internationally alike, and it is an area of law that is increasingly impacted by geopolitics.

Here, we look at some existing and upcoming cyber legislation and lay out what remains up for discussion and debate.

Leading the way: data privacy, cybersecurity

One of the most developed areas of cyberlaw pertains to data and privacy. In 2018, the European Union (EU) passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to regulate data use, processing, and privacy across the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR builds on the Council of Europe's 1981 legally binding Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, or Convention 108.

Today, around 120 countries have adopted data protection and privacy legislation and many have introduced new laws or amended existing ones to apply to cyberspace, often modelling them on the GDPR. They include South Korea's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), Brazil's General Data Protection Law, and South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI).

In the U.S., the American Data Privacy and Protection Act was introduced in the House in June 2022 and is currently pending. According to Scott J. Shackelford, an expert in business law at Indiana University and executive director of the university's Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, the U.S. has adopted a more "freewheeling model" than other countries, including "a lighter-touch regulatory, both for privacy and cybersecurity."

Individual U.S. states, however, have adopted tougher measures, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 and its 2020 amendment, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), or Proposition 24.

For the most part, there is "a little bit of a transatlantic divide" on privacy, said Shackelford, but he sees some convergence on cybersecurity, due in part to initiatives like the United Nations' norms for Responsible State Behavior in Cyberspace, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology's Cybersecurity Framework.

Cybersecurity laws within the U.S. often vary by state. However, in March 2022, President Biden signed the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA) into law. This federal legislation requires critical infrastructure companies to report cybersecurity incidents, including ransomware attacks, to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). .... ' 

Regulating Bossware

 Had not seen this term for some time, but it is real. Can be more powerful now. Gvt regulation? 

ACM NEWS

U.S. Government to Crack Down on "Bossware" That Spies On Employees' Computers

By Futurism, November 7, 2022

The use and abuse of worker surveillance tech in general — not just bossware — has been "growing by the minute," said Mark Gaston Pearce, executive director of the Workers' Rights Institute at Georgetown Law School.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic drove a wave of working from home, companies have been relentless in their efforts to digitally police and spy on remote employees by using what's known as "bossware." That's the pejorative name for software that tracks the websites an employee visits, screenshots their computer screens, and even records their faces and voices.

And now, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency of the federal government, is looking to intervene.

"Close, constant surveillance and management through electronic means threaten employees' basic ability to exercise their rights," said NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, in a Monday memo. "I plan to urge the Board to apply the Act to protect employees, to the greatest extent possible, from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management practices."

From Futurism

View Full Article    

Suing for Surveillance

 See also with further comment in Schneier:    

Journalist Sues Predator Spyware Maker for Allegedly Helping Government Surveil Him

A Greek financial journalist is one of several who believe they have been targeted for surveillance by the nation's government with the help of Intellexa.

By Lucas Ropek

A Greek journalist who was targeted for surveillance with spyware has filed a lawsuit against the spyware’s proprietor, hoping to spur a criminal investigation into the malfeasance surrounding the sales and use of such spying tools.

In late March 2021, Thanasis Koukakis was notified by a team of digital researchers that his phone had been infected with malware. A reporter who typically covers finance, Koukakis had been in the midst of investigating corruption issues when his device was infected. Research later showed that his phone had been under surveillance for approximately two months.  .... ' 

New York AI Bias Law Prompts Uncertainty

 New York AI Bias Law Prompts Uncertainty

The Wall Street Journal, Richard Vanderford

September 21, 2022

A law that goes into effect in New York City in January requires companies to audit their artificial intelligence (AI) hiring systems to assess whether they incorporate racial and gender biases. The law holds hiring companies liable for any biases and could impose fines for violations, but lacks clear guidelines for the AI audit process. While the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has not offered a timeline for when it will publish rules to implement the law, some companies already are taking steps to comply. Said Anthony Habayeb of AI governance software company Monitaur Inc., "Instead of waiting for someone to tell me what to do…I built controls around these applications because I know like with any software, things can and do go wrong."  ... ' 

Law and Technology

Worth a read, NFT and more.

These Are Not the Apes You Are Looking For

By Andres Guadamuz

Communications of the ACM, September 2022, Vol. 65 No. 9, Pages 20-22    10.1145/3548761

Imagine you want to stream some music. On today's Web, you would sign up for a service such as Spotify or Apple Music. These platforms have obtained copyright licenses from record companies and artists, and they offer you that music for a monthly subscription. The music streaming services are centralized intermediaries. They exist to connect musicians and fans, and in exchange they take a substantial cut of the money.

But a growing number of technology enthusiasts have a different vision, which they call Web3. To them, it "represents the next phase of the Internet and, perhaps, of organizing society.'a One of the pillars of the Web3 vision is tokenization: using representing ownership of different assets using cryptographic tokens that can be exchanged on a blockchain or other decentralized system. Only the person who knows the private key associated with a token can use or transfer it. A token can be used to represent anything, from frequent-flyer miles to hotel reservations. By transferring a token from user to user, it can record who owns an associated asset.

In a Web3 world, your music experience would be mediated not by Spotify but by tokens. Instead of signing up for a music service, you would buy a token directly from the artist. The token would represent your right to listen to the music. The token's cryptography would be tied directly into the digital rights management protecting the music, so that only token owners would be able to listen. In other words, the token living on a decentralized blockchain would let you and the artist automatically cut out the middlemen like Spotify, and maybe even record companies.

One of the sectors receiving particularly intense Web3 interest and investment is the creative industries. In this area, the tokenization push is being driven by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptographic tokens that represent a unique asset. One banana is pretty much like any other banana, but a Picasso portrait and an Ai Weiwei sculpture are radically different. The tokens representing them are not interchangeable, or fungible, hence the name.

The most famous NFT project is the Bored Ape Yacht Club, whose collection of "Bored Ape" NFTs have been selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Each of the 9,999 Bored Ape NFTs consists of a token on the Ethereum blockchain linked to a JPEG cartoon drawing of an ape. The JPEGs were procedurally generated with different combinations of traits, including jackets, hats, and facial expressions. While they all resemble each other, each individual Bored Ape is unique, a bit like the different cards in a trading-card set

There is currently a push to move the economy in the direction of a wider use of tokens, and this is being driven mostly by a combination of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and crypto-currency holders and investors. If the funders, developers, and artists pushing NFTs and Web3 get their way, the media landscape will look very different from what it looks like now.

This might sound like a great idea, but only until you start looking in detail at how it would actually work. As soon as you do, there are serious problems at every practical level.  .... ' 

Neurotechnology and the Law: Implants

Considerable issue as Neurotech advances,  Some good examples below and at link.   Including implants for non medical reasons?

Neurotechnology and the Law   By Esther Shein

Communications of the ACM, August 2022, Vol. 65 No. 8, Pages 16-18  10.1145/3542816

As brain implants become more commonplace and may eventually be used for non-medical purposes, some experts believe they must be regulated.

Regulations should be considered "a natural next step," says Rajesh P. N. Rao, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle with a background in computer science, engineering, and computational neuroscience, who earned his Ph.D. in artificial intelligence (AI)/computer vision, and used a postdoctoral scholarship to train in neuroscience.

Eventually, there will be two-way communication between doctors and the devices, with AI as an intermediary, Rao says. "In the future, that kind of device embedded with AI can look at what's happening in other parts of the brain to treat depression or epilepsy and stopping seizures and bridging an injured area of the brain or shaping the brain to be less depressed."

Efforts are under way to further the use of these devices. For example, BrainGate is a U.S.-based multi-institutional research effort to develop and test novel neurotechnology aimed at restoring communication, mobility, and independence. It is geared at people who still have cognitive function, but have lost bodily connection due to paralysis, limb loss, or neurodegenerative disease. BrainGate's partner institutions include Brown, Emory, and Stanford universities, as well as the University of California at Davis, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is working on a robotically implanted brain-computer interface (BCI) system through his company Neuralink, which aims to allow the brain to communicate with a computer. Neuralink is designing what it claims is the first neural implant that would let a user control a computer or mobile device. The approach is to insert micron-scale threads that contain electrodes into the areas of the brain that control movement. Each thread is connected to Neuralink's implant, the Link.

Rao says he is not aware of any brain implants currently being used for augmentative purposes in humans to facilitate better athletic performance or for enhanced gaming skills, but the potential exists. Achieving such improvements will necessitate "much more nuanced regulations," because once that happens, "one has to think about what this device is doing, since it is being used for enhancing the capabilities of people."

Non-invasive devices already are being used to deliver electricity to the brain to improve sports performance, Rao says.  .... ' 

Examining AI Liability

 Good overview of the topic and related liability issues, we looked at this in early AI and analytical applications. Now especially applicable in automated vehicles.

Who Is Liable when AI Kills?

We need to change rules and institutions while still promoting innovation to protect people from faulty AI       By George Maliha, Ravi B. Parikh on June 29, 2022    in SCIAM

Who is responsible when AI harms someone?

A California jury may soon have to decide. In December 2019, a person driving a Tesla with an artificial intelligence driving system killed two people in Gardena in an accident. The Tesla driver faces several years in prison. In light of this and other incidents, both the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating Tesla crashes, and NHTSA has recently broadened its probe to explore how drivers interact with Tesla systems. On the state front, California is considering curtailing the use of Tesla autonomous driving features.

Our current liability system—our system to determine responsibility and payment for injuries—is completely unprepared for AI. Liability rules were designed for a time when humans caused the majority of mistakes or injuries. Thus, most liability frameworks place punishments on the end-user doctor, driver or other human who caused an injury. But with AI, errors may occur without any human input at all. The liability system needs to adjust accordingly. Bad liability policy will harm patients, consumers and AI developers.   .... ' 

Quick Guide to AI Law and Regulation

AI TECH POLICY

A quick guide to the most important AI law you’ve never heard of

The European Union is planning new legislation aimed at curbing the worst harms associated with artificial intelligence.

By Melissa Heikkilä, archive, Technology Review

It’s a Wild West out there for artificial intelligence. AI applications are increasingly used to make important decisions about humans’ lives with little to no oversight or accountability. This can have devastating consequences: wrongful arrests, incorrect grades for students, and even financial ruin. Women, marginalized groups, and people of color often bear the brunt of AI’s propensity for error and overreach. 

The European Union thinks it has a solution: the mother of all AI laws, called the AI Act. It is the first law that aims to curb these harms by regulating the whole sector. If the EU succeeds, it could set a new global standard for AI oversight around the world.

But the world of EU legislation can be complicated and opaque. Here’s a quick guide to everything you need to know about the EU’s AI Act. The bill is currently being amended by members of the European Parliament and EU countries. 

What’s the big deal?

The AI Act is hugely ambitious. It would require extra checks for “high risk” uses of AI that have the most potential to harm people. This could include systems used for grading exams, recruiting employees, or helping judges make decisions about law and justice. The first draft of the bill also includes bans on uses of AI deemed “unacceptable,” such as scoring people on the basis of their perceived trustworthiness. 

The bill would also restrict law enforcement agencies’ use of facial recognition in public places. There is a loud group of power players, including members of the European Parliament and countries such as Germany, that want a full ban or moratorium on its use in public by both law enforcement and private companies, arguing that the technology enables mass surveillance. 

If the EU manages to pull this off, it would be one of the strongest curbs yet on the technology. Some US states and cities, such as San Francisco and Virginia, have introduced restrictions on facial recognition, but the EU’s ban would apply to 27 countries and a population of over 447 million people. 

How will it affect citizens? 

In theory, it should protect humans from the worst side effects of AI by ensuring that applications face at least some level of scrutiny and accountability. 

People can trust that they will be protected from the most harmful forms of AI, says Brando Benifei, an Italian member of the European Parliament, who is a key member of the team amending the bill. 

Related Story

Deepfake porn is ruining women’s lives. Now the law may finally ban it.

After years of activists fighting to protect victims of image-based sexual violence, deepfakes are finally forcing lawmakers to pay attention.

The bill requires people to be notified when they encounter deepfakes, biometric recognition systems, or AI applications that claim to be able to read their emotions. Lawmakers are also debating whether the law should set up a mechanism for people to complain and seek redress when they have been harmed by an AI system. 

The European Parliament, one of the EU institutions working on amending the bill, is also pushing for a ban on predictive policing systems. Such systems use AI to analyze large data sets in the interest of preemptively deploying police to crime-prone areas or to trying to predict a person’s potential criminality. These systems are highly controversial, and critics say they are often racist and lack transparency.

What about outside the EU?

Ricardian Contracts vs Smart Contracts

 Brought to my attention, unsure as yet how broadly the definition is used at this time, can see the need for the understanding of such an agreement by human and machine means.

The Ricardian contract, as invented by Ian Grigg in 1996, (Wikipedia)  is a method of recording a document as a contract at law, and linking it securely to other systems, such as accounting, for the contract as an issuance of value.[1][2] It is robust through use of identification by cryptographic hash function, transparent through use of readable text for legal prose and efficient through markup language to extract essential information.

A Ricardian contract places the defining elements of a legal agreement in a format that can be expressed and executed in software.[3] The key is to make the format both machine-readable, such that they can easily be extracted for computational purposes, and readable as an ordinary text document such that lawyers and contracting parties may read the essentials of the contract conveniently.[4]

From a legal perspective, the use of markup language embedded within a mostly legal prose document leads to reduced transaction costs, faster dispute resolution, better enforceability and enhanced transparency.[4][5] From a computing perspective, the Ricardian contract is a software design pattern to digitize documents and have them participate within financial transactions, such as payments, without losing any of the richness of the contracting tradition. Publication of the content and reference to that content by the unique cryptographic message digest eliminates frauds based on multiple presentations.[5]

The method arises out of the work of Ian Grigg completed in the mid-1990s in contributions to Ricardo,[6] a system of assets transfers that was built in 1995-1996 by Systemics and included the pattern. The system and the design pattern was named after David Ricardo in honour of his seminal contribution to international trade theory.  .... '  

Adapting to Gig Law

 Gig Law,  of how do we manage, or even define part time work, is increasingly important.  Here a first example of how this might be managed. 

Judge rules California Prop 22 gig workers law is unconstitutional

Voters approved the law in November, By Kim Lyons

California’s gig workers law, which allows companies like Uber and Lyft to treat workers as independent contractors— not employees— has been ruled unconstitutional and unenforceable by a judge. Voters approved the law as ballot initiative Proposition 22 in November, with companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash spending more than $200 million to campaign for the measure. Labor organizations, including the Service Employees International Union, opposed it.  ...  ' 

Interaction of Law, Software, Evidence, Compliance

 When software acts as evidence.   And also when it further acts in conjunction with compliance-required  data.    Brought up as part of a study of compliance-based systems, and integration of smart contract concepts. 

The article below was pointed to me by Bruce Schneier in his blog:  'Risks of Evidentiary Based Software'   , where there is likely to be useful comments on the topic.  Other comments?   ....

Dangers Posed by Evidentiary Software—and What to Do About It  in Lawfareblog.com  By Susan Landau   ...   '

Law, Rule of Law and Computer Science

Lots to consider here, and it seems we are not close to understanding the implications.  The pressure to automate lots of this is very strong. 

Understanding Law and the Rule of Law: A Plea to Augment CS Curricula,  By Mireille Hildebrandt

Communications of the ACM, May 2021, Vol. 64 No. 5, Pages 28-31   10.1145/3425779

Some people think they are above the law. In a constitutional democracy this cannot be the case. Neither the head of state nor the doctor or the police are above the law. They should all be enabled to do their work, but we do not buy the claim that they could act as they wish. In 18th century Europe we replaced the authoritarian rule by law with a rule of law, to mitigate uninhibited power, and to ensure that those in power can be held to account in a court of law. Whereas rule by law is rule by persons (law as an instrument of control), rule of law implies a division of powers where those who enact the rules do not get the last word on their interpretation.13

This also refers to the difference between law and ethics. Replacing rule by law with rule of law means we do not want to depend on the ethical inclinations of those who rule us. Instead, we can send them home if we don't agree with the rules they impose (democracy) and we can contest their interpretation of those rules in court (rule of law). As a thought experiment I ask the reader how this would apply to the rules computing systems impose: Can we send home the developers (and/or those who implement these systems to gain a profit or to engage in public administration)? Can we contest their rules in a court of law when they impact our choice architecture?

Law and the rule of law have been implemented by way of intricate checks and balances that safeguard the contestability of legally relevant decision making, thus preparing the ground for robust, legitimate, and binding decisions. This is how we create and sustain societal trust: not by cherishing the illusion of an ideal world where power plays no role, but by creating and sustaining countervailing powers. Simultaneously, law is about coordinating human interaction, making sure that governments treat their citizens with equal respect and concern,5 thus providing for legal certainty and justice. That is why it is imperative that nobody is above the law.

This also goes for the architects of our computational environments, who increasingly design and engineer the space we inhabit. Computer scientists, Web developers, roboticists, and software engineers must understand both when and how the law applies to them, and insofar as they develop modules, systems or applications for specific use cases, they should be sensitized about how and when the law may apply. This goes for issues of privacy and data protection, cybercrime, intellectual property rights and private law liability (for example, tort), but also for issues of jurisdiction (what law applies) and international law (how national legal systems interact at the global level). It goes even more for the idea of the rule of law that should inform our understanding of the law.

Based on many years of teaching law to master's students of computer science,8 I have come to believe that by teaching them about law I am not only helping them to comply with current law, but also offering them a unique opportunity to engage with the foundations and implications of their own 'trade' (precisely because computing systems also produce rules that affect human behavior).   ....  ' 

Examples of Machine Learning for Law and Compliance

Good general overview of a space we have worked for a while,  yes good opportunities. But beyond ML methods.

AI/ML Applications in Law and Compliance    Posted by William Vorhies in DSC

Summary:  Some industries are a clear slam-dunk for AI/ML applications and some less so.  The legal, regulatory, and compliance businesses (law firms, internal legal departments, and the contract review and regulatory compliance departments of heavily regulated industries) fall in this last category.  This is a review of seven companies found by TopBots to be successful; pointing to opportunities others can follow.

Remember just a few years ago when we were looking forward to now or a little beyond and imagining what applications AI/ML would have in different industries.  Some of those prognostications were slam dunks as they applied to customer propensity or using machine vision to count whatever widgets you were interested in.

What struck me as really speculative at the time were applications that impacted fields dense in laws, regulations, and complex situations where human knowledge and intuition had long dominated. ... ' 

Legal Tech Startups

 Recall our continuing look at 'smart contract'  efforts and implications.

6 LegalTech Startups Disrupting the Legal Industry  in PRNewswire

“Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.” Those were the words of Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher from the 1700s who thought that knowledge was rapidly advancing towards perfection. Were he alive today, Mr. Bentham might be truly amazed at how technology is being used to make the legal system more efficient than ever. As for the perfection part, he may be a bit underwhelmed.

In our recent piece on global financial technology companies, we noted that a subset of fintech is legal tech (most commonly spelled legaltech), a domain where technology is used to manage and make sense of the vast amount of legal information out there so that it can be transformed into exorbitant invoices. In past articles, we looked at how artificial intelligence is being used in law along with other technologies such as legal chatbots. Since then, investments in legaltech startups have soared, clearing one billion dollars in 2018 and even more in 2019. Today, we want to look at some of the startups emerging as leaders in using technology to transform today’s legal sector. ... ' 

Attorneys Embracing Analytics

A fairly short descriptive piece.  Were involved with several examples of analytics/statistics before judges.    Depends much upon the kind of legal proceeding you are involved in.   Will it mean convincing a jury?   The step after this is to build logical systems to represent law.  Like the 'smart contract' still in its very early phases.   But I think it will ultimately be able to model legal data and logic and analytics. 

More Attorneys Embrace Data Analytics With Expert Witness Research
Here is how data analytics can make an impact on expert witness research, and why attorneys are interested in it.  By Sean Parker 

We have previously written about the growing utilization of big data in the legal industry. Big data has unquestionably become more integral to many aspects of the legal profession, especially with researching laws and case precedents. However, there are other avenues for law firms to use big data to improve their business models. One benefit that is not regularly discussed Is the value of big data for conducting research on expert witnesses.  ... "

Following Legal Analytics: Contracts and Liabilities

Our recent looks at eDiscovery and related AI and analytics alerted us to this.  Accenture's connection would seem to indicate seriousness of these efforts.  It is a very obvious space for advanced natural language processing, analysis and cross referencing with current and future contexts.

Legal analytics: Accenture applies NLP to analyze contracts and liabilities

To find specific information in a million-plus contracts, the global professional services company turned to natural language processing and AI, launching a legal analytics hub in the process.
     
By Thor Olavsrud in CIO

Organizations steeped in text documents have an ally in their quest to streamline business processes. Natural language processing, a branch of AI focused on communication, is helping companies such as Accenture surface high-value information and cut costs by bringing text-based, unstructured communications into the machine learning age.  

With more than a million contracts in its records system and thousands more added monthly, Accenture’s legal organization of about 2,800 professionals was struggling to find specific information across contracts, thanks to a tedious, costly process for which detailed cross-document search capability was limited.   ... "