By David Oheobe Ede Esq

The evolution of artificial intelligence as a technology application solutions to education, engineering, finance, natural science, medicine, automotive, defense, agriculture, art, energy automation and mostly Law has created sustainable upgrade to service delivery to the traditional work of human in all the above subject. Artificial intelligence companies continue to find ways of developing technology that will manage laborious tasks in different industries for better speed and accuracy.

In the legal profession, AI has already found its way into supporting lawyers and clients alike.

Artificial Intelligence, according to dictionary Britannica is simply defined as ‘the ability of a digital computer controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings, the term is frequently applied to projects of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes and characteristics of humans, such as ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience’ and in short according to Wikipedia, ‘machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animal’.

The growing interest in applying AI in law is slowly transforming the profession and closing in on the work of paralegals, legal researchers, and litigators.Law firms and professional services companies that want to make the best decision for their businesses in the era of AI and analyse where AI can augment the workflows of its professionals. This article, reveals the different ways in which AI is currently applied in the legal profession in Nigeria and how technology providers are trying to streamline work processes.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN NIGERIAN LAW PRACTICE

Artificial Intelligence is a new law technology that has enormous potential for lawyers in Nigeria to improve how legal services operates in terms of improving and promoting efficiency of certain types of legal task, risk and most importantly reducing costs for clients.Current developments in AI in legal practice come in various applications. Richard Susskind, one of the UK’s most respected thinkers at the intersection of legal and technology, believes that this trend will continue to grow in the coming years.Susskind opines:

 “AI and other technologies are enabling machines to take on many of the tasks           that many used to think required human lawyers and that’s not plateauing. It             seems to be happening at quite a rate.”

The developments, according to Susskind,will eventually warm up by 2020.true to Susskind’s predictions, 2020 saw a major milestone development of AI in law practice in Nigeria. Current applications of AI appear in following major categories:

. Due diligence

  • Prediction technology
  • Legal analytics
  • Document automation.
  • Intellectual property

.  Virtual proceeding and E-filling

.  Saving cost and time

 

DUE DILIGENCE

One of the primary tasks that lawyers perform on behalf of their clients the confirmation of facts and figures, and thoroughly assessing a legal situation. This due diligence process is required for intelligently advising clients on what their options are, and what actions they should take.

While extensive due diligence can positively impact long-term shareholder returns, the process can also be very time-consuming and tedious. Lawyers need to conduct a comprehensive investigation for meaningful results. As such, lawyers are also prone to mistakes and inaccuracy when doing spot checks.

LawGeex claims that its software validates contracts if they are within predefined policies. If they fail to meet the standards, then the AI provides suggestions for editing and approval. It does this by combining machine learning, text analysis, statistical benchmarks and legal knowledge by lawyers according to the company.

 

PREDICTION TECHNOLOGY

According to the company, users can  which documents put them at risk for litigation when they use the software.Indeed, several AI companies have ventured into this field such as Intraspexion, which has patented software systems that claim to present early warning signs to lawyers when the AI tool detects threats of litigation.

The system works by searching for high-risk documents and displays them according to the level of risk that the AI has determined. When a user clicks on a document, risk terms as identified by subject matter experts through the algorithm are highlighted.

Ravel LawSoftware;The data can also be used in pitching a law firm’s services to potential clients by providing intelligence on the opposing counsel, generating values on probability of winning the case and identifying litigation trends to use in their marketing campaigns.

Ravel Law’s software also claims to provide lawyers with judges’ data on cases, circuits and ruling on their dashboard, which can be used in landing new clients. Currently, the company is bolstering their data minefield by working with Harvard Law School in digitizing the faculty’s US case law library to be made available on its tech platform.

 

LEGAL RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Case documents and docket entries provide supplementary insights during litigation by lawyers. Current AI tools claim that today’s software products are able to extract key data points from these documents to support arguments.

At JPMorgan, for instance, an AI-powered programme called COIN has been used since June 2017 to interpret commercial loan agreements.

This meant that work that previously took about 360,000 lawyers’ hours is now being done in seconds.

Every lawsuit and court case requires diligent legal research. However, the amount of links to open, cases to read and information to note, can overwhelm lawyers who have limited time doing research. Lawyers can take advantage of the natural language search capability of the ROSS Intelligence software by asking questions, and receiving information such as recommended readings, related case law and secondary resources.

The company claims that lawyers can ask ROSS questions in plain English such as “what is the Freedom of Information Act?” and the software will respond with references and citations. Like most machine learning systems, ROSS purportedly improves with use.

Law Pavilion is a great Nigeria first Artificial intelligence legal assistant designed to assist attorneys and lawyers with legal research, legal opinion, litigation and legal drafting. They also operate Electronic law report In Nigeria.

 

DOCUMENT AUTOMATION.

Some law firms are also beginning to adapt such technology by drafting documents through automated software. Many such software companies claim that the final document, which could take days by manual human drafting, is generated in a matter of minutes.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Securing patents, copyrights and trademarks is often best left to a lawyer’s expertise. However, the entire patent application process can be long and arduous. Traditional trademark and patent search, for example, involves looking into hundreds, if not thousands, of results through manual research. This takes so much time, which is ironic considering that patent applications are time-sensitive.

According to US patent attorneyPatrick Richards, “You only have one year from the first time the invention is publicly disclosed [i.e. sold] to file a patent application; if as a business owner you launched a product within the last year, you need to talk to a patent attorney right away to make sure it is protected.”

ITrademarkNow is a company taking on some of the manual knowledge work of intellectual property application with AI. It uses a complex algorithm that is said to shorten weeklong searches for patents, registered products and trademark using the Trademark Clearance platform, which returns search results in less than 15 seconds according to the company’s claims.

The system analyzes the results and ranks them according to relevance to the user as identified by the algorithm. As this many e-discovery applications, the solution promises efficiency of spent attention for legal teams.

VIRTUAL PROCEEDING AND E-FILLING

The spread of covid-19 pandemic to Nigeria in Feburary 24th 2020 saw the fulfillment of the prediction of Suss kind. The National Judicial Council(NJC) released: NATIONAL JUDICIAL COUNCIL COVID-19 POLICY REPORT:
GUIDELINES FOR COURT SITTINGS AND RELATED MATTERS IN THE COVID-19 PERIOD. Itinter alia provide for remote court sitting, e-filling, e-payments and e-service of processes among counsels and their parties through emails,facebook and whatsapp accounts with court sittings held via Zoom etc.This largely reduces activities of lawyers in court, court registryand in firms to save stress, cost and improve overall performance. Indeed, AI has brought innovative and sustainable development to the traditional practice of law in Nigeria.

SAVING COST AND TIME

Every lawyer must accept the fact that AI will certainly take away some aspect of lawyers work in the future but not replace lawyers totally because Artificial Intelligence cannot eliminate some legal services that involves human interaction, negotiations and trust.

 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the above are the sustainable development of Artificial Intelligence to the practice of law in Nigeria. While it appears to post threat to some paralegal and legal business, its overwhelming development of legal practice cannot be overemphasize and as such, Judges, lawyers and other stakeholders in law practice in Nigeria are to embrace the developments brought by Artificial Intelligence.

REFERENCE

  1. Allen W. Read, Dictionary Britannica 15thedn (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc) 7055
  2. https://www.m.wikipedia.org
  3. https://www.com
  4. https://www.bamandgadsolicitors.com.ng/artificial-intelligence-and-lawyers-in-nigeria/
  5. https://guardian.ng/features/artificial-intelligence-will-shape-the-future-of-legal-practice-in-nigeria/

By David Oheobe Ede Esq