Lawyers replaced by *Legal* A.I.? Not yet. →

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Steve Lohr, writing for the New York Times,

"...recent research and even the people working on the software meant to automate legal work say the adoption of A.I. in law firms will be a slow, task-by-task process. In other words, like it or not, a robot is not about to replace your lawyer. At least, not anytime soon."

This makes sense to me. Automation isn't a one-shot when it comes to thought-intensive tasks: it's a process. The good news for automators of the AI world, is that for all of the complexity of our legal system, it's (mostly) logical. Getting around arguments is going to be exceedingly difficult for a machine to take on, but when it comes to the *happy path* of any particular legal process, just look at Legal Zoom. They're taking the boring stuff away from lawyers every day, so all they need to do is check the documents once the forms have been filled in.