Anyone who works in conveyancing will be familiar with the one-star versus five-star review issue. For most of your clients, you are an absolute superstar who moved heaven and earth to get them into their dream home. Unfortunately, for the disgruntled and unreasonable, you are incompetent, negligent and frankly they don’t know why they are paying you, as they did most of the work.
Sadly, it’s this tiny minority that loves to go online and express their disappointment in the only way they know how, with a scathing review on their favourite whinging platform. If you’re not five star brilliance then you’re one star incompetence and they have a duty to share this with an unsuspecting and naive public.
Which is exactly the same debate we are seeing with artificial intelligence (AI) today, albeit with fewer shouty emails sent at 11:15pm on a Saturday night. When we’re talking with lawyers about the use of the technology, views are polarised – it’s either got to be 100% perfect or it’s a worthless piece of junk.
Why the extremes?
We’ve seen many cases where lawyers start to investigate technology with amazing promise and initial curiosity turns to an overwhelming desire to dismiss it, due to inevitable shortcomings they find. It’s safe to say that a major factor is due to the fatigue of the over-promises of those who, despite never having walked a metre in the shoes of lawyers, have whipped up some magic that will allegedly revolutionise the conveyancing process.
It’s hardly surprising therefore, that when shown a demonstration of AI technology, there are plenty of opportunities to highlight issues that may or may not be critical, but can be seen as undermining the entire concept. At a trade show recently, we showed a solicitor an automatically generated enquiry asking for a deed of variation due to lack of access to a basement and were met with a derisive – ‘you should not be asking that – it shows how useless it is’ followed by an extravagant flounce in the direction of the nearest coffee stand.
The challenge is that this reaction is completely understandable given the hysteria in the media that technology is making a bee-line for legal jobs. Whilst the role of the lawyer is much more than just the interpretation of documents, when technology is able to make a reasonable fist of identifying issues, it’s natural that such concerns will arise. Judgement is of course vital, but it’s the ability to interact with clients where the skill really lies, and is where we should be focussing our energies.
Liability –another brick wall
The other ingredient in this minestrone soup of fear about AI are liability concerns. The argument goes that If the technology cannot be relied upon to be 100% accurate, which it can’t, then will the provider be responsible for the mistakes that it makes. The cold reality is that whilst providers must have indemnity and product liability insurance, the responsibility will always remain with the lawyer. Otherwise, it would be like trying to blame Microsoft when Word autocorrects your report on title to show 99 years remaining on a lease as being 999 years.
This is where the well-documented concept of ‘keeping the human in the loop’ comes into play, whereby whilst the technology can offer benefits, lawyers must take action to ensure it is not used by inexperienced users and everything is reviewed before being sent to a client. That said, the idea that law firms should be delegating all responsibility to technology has a bit of an Alice in Wonderland feel about it, which does need a “Drink me” dose of reality.
l meglio è l’inimico del bene
Like the humans that walk amongst us, mistyping details, using incorrect title numbers and deleting critical S20 paragraphs from report precedents, we must take steps to monitor and check any legal advice or communications. The technology that is around today is amazingly efficient, but it’s not and may never be perfect.
However, given the rise of the use of AI amongst our clients, we simply have no choice but to adopt technology that can support us in reducing the potential issues before those same clients send us their numerous pages of AI-generated complaints.
As the above phrase explains, ‘perfect is the enemy of the good’- AI certainly isn’t perfect but neither is it a ‘worthless piece of flashiness’ as someone described what we do recently. Which was kind.
About the author
Peter Ambrose is the owner of The Partnership and Legalito – specialising in the delivery of transparent and ultra-efficient conveyancing services and software.
