Article by David Field, Chief Legal Counsel and Director, People & Finance at Canon Australia
It is something of a tired cliché these days to talk of the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) replacing lawyers. There are already substantial places where increasingly intelligent technology is performing tasks that lawyers used to perform, and we should expect technology to make increasingly aggressive inroads into the practice of law in upcoming decades.
No sensible lawyer should resist this trend, and in fact, the true challenge for lawyers lies in achieving a type of collaboration with technology. Lawyers need to use technology to rapidly and efficiently solve high-volume or routine issues, freeing themselves to apply their uniquely human skills to deliver more value for clients and the community.
So, what are these uniquely human skills, and how should we be looking to deliver more value with them? I’m being told I need to collaborate — what’s my contribution to the collaboration?
