Reframing the conversation
Professor Enrique Dans discusses the exponential rise of transformative technology in our business and personal lives – and what that could mean for lawyers and their organisations.
People tend to see technology as something that will allow them to get rid of the parts of their job that they don’t like – that they find repetitive, cumbersome or boring. Equally, it’s seen as something which will allow more efficiency and allow the opportunity to concentrate on the interesting parts of their job. In the past, this might have meant something as simple as word processors or automation. But now, all of a sudden, a computer can not only automate, but a computer can learn. That means you can start giving the computer a number of cases, and it starts building rules and logic on its own. Not exactly on its own – of course you need an algorithm that allows it to learn – but after a while, it learns. It can recognise different things, something in a picture or certain clauses in a contract – as soon as you provide it with enough data for the computer to learn, there are seemingly few limits on what could be achieved.
