The future of AI and how firms and lawyers can prepare for it

On Thursday, May 18, IE Law School hosted ieLawX, an afternoon of discussions on the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and law. To wrap up the enlightening afternoon, a roundtable was held with all of the speakers to discuss their final thoughts and answer questions from the audience.

The first topic of discussion was what it takes to become an indispensable lawyer. The panel agreed that today, lawyers must be able to analyze and process data to reach conclusions, and therefore, law schools must provide this training to prepare our future attorneys.

The next topic was about the role the government plays in the industry. Owen Byrd led the conversation, asserting that the government has not done much to support the use of new technology (for example, data availability). According to Byrd, even California, the home of Silicon Valley, has a shamefully obsolete technology system for legal professionals. Similarly, in the commercial market, companies avoid the judicial process because the courts can’t offer a cost-effective solution. But exceptions exist: the startup Modria is the dispute resolution system that eBay uses. They deal with €100 problems that aren’t worth taking to court. The panel concluded that we need to do a better job scaling solutions to problems.

The last question from the audience was: what are the European market’s challenges in this industry and what can Europe learn from the US market? The American speakers asserted that the main challenge is that it’s fragmented: the EU is an entity, but there are state-specific laws and the market is still small. The success of legal tech ventures depends heavily on how well these companies can scale across languages and systems.

To conclude the discussion, the guest speakers were asked to sum up the future of AI and law in one statement. Dan Martin Katz said, “I’m very bullish on the future of legal but we have some challenges ahead that we need to face honestly… There’s a business case to be made about innovation.” Another interesting and meaningful statement was given by Owen Byrd, who understands the consequences of a changing legal field: “This is about justice, it’s not some silly little game or app. This is something that’s important to the whole world.”

Closing remarks were given by Javier de Cendra (Dean of the IE Law School) and the host, Alejandro Touriño. They closed the afternoon by reminding us that this is only a small and practical taste of how the legal system is transforming. IE Law School is committed to the legal tech industry, and will continue to promote and engage in innovation in the field.