律師行業(yè)將被顛覆？

律師行業(yè)將被顛覆？

律師事務(wù)所紛紛投資人工智能領(lǐng)域，傳統(tǒng)上由初級律師承擔(dān)的枯燥工作正在逐漸自動化。法律行業(yè)可能即將迎來“優(yōu)步化”，成為被技術(shù)顛覆的下一個目標(biāo)。

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

mundane 平凡的；世界的['m?nde?n; m?n'de?n]

clause 條款；[計] 子句[kl??z]

paralegal 律師的專職助手[p?r?'li?g(?)l]

churn 攪拌；攪動[t???n]

閱讀馬上開始，建議您計算一下閱讀整篇文章所用的時間，對照下方的參考值就可以評估出您的英文閱讀水平。

如果您讀完全文用時為： 那么，您的閱讀速度相當(dāng)于 每分鐘閱讀的英文單詞數(shù)

4分42秒 母語為英語者的朗讀速度 140

2分45秒 母語為英語的中學(xué)生的閱讀速度 250

1分41秒 母語為英語的大學(xué)生的閱讀速度 350

0分56秒 母語為英語的速讀高手 1000

Legal firms unleash office automatons（564 words）

By Jane Croft

-----------------------------------------------------

Linklaters and Pinsent Masons have become the latest law firms to invest in artificial intelligence, as the legal profession tries to automate the mundane tasks that have traditionally been the preserve of junior lawyers.

Linklaters has developed Verifi, a computer program that can sift through 14 UK and European regulatory registers to check client names for banks. The company said it could process thousands of names overnight.

Edward Chan, banking partner at Linklaters, said: “Previously it would have taken a trained junior lawyer an average of 12 minutes to search a single customer name.

“AI is an indispensible tool for coping with the ever-growing amounts of data which lawyers have to handle in running complex matters. Our lawyers are not engineers or data scientists. Good solid legal skills remain what we look for in our lawyers.”

Pinsent Masons has developed a program that reads and analyses clauses in loan agreements. Its TermFrame system also helps guide lawyers through transactions and point them towards the correct precedents at each stage of a process.

Another law firm, Dentons, has set up NextLaw Labs, a virtual company which looks at the application of technology with the law. It has invested in ROSS, an IBM Watson-powered legal adviser app that streamlines legal research, saving lawyers’ time and clients’ money. ROSS is currently being pilot-tested at Dentons and approximately 20 other law firms.

Hodge, Jones & Allen, a law firm, has worked with academics from University College London to create software that assesses the merits of personal injury cases.

Professor Richard Susskind, a technology adviser to the Lord Chief Justice, has predicted radical change in the legal sector, pointing out that intelligent search systems could now outperform junior lawyers and paralegals in reviewing large sets of documents and selecting the most relevant.

He told a legal conference last month that the legal profession had five years to reinvent itself from being legal advisers to legal technologists and criticised law schools for “churning out 20th-century lawyers”.

A recent study by Deloitte suggested that technology has already contributed to a reduction of about 31,000 jobs in the legal sector, including roles such as legal secretaries and a further 39 per cent of jobs were at “high risk” of being made redundant by machines in the next two decades.

There has been speculation that law is ripe for “Uberisation”, becoming the next target of technological disruption.

One smaller firm, Riverview Law, has partnered with the computer science department at Liverpool University to work on artifical intelligence products.

Riverview is setting-up a separate technology business to exploit its software and the intellectual property that it has and is creating. It has launched a virtual assistant Kim designed to help legal teams make quicker and better decisions.

Karl Chapman, chief executive of Riverview, said Kim has three varying levels of complexity including one level where a lawyer can ask it to suggest the best order to renegotiate a series of corporate contracts.

Many believe that AI will simply automate more routine parts of legal work so that lawyers focus on more complex, high value areas of client work.

“I would liken it to mathematicians calculating sums on slide rulers before computers. Computers didn’t do away with mathematicians who are probably more highly valued now than they were before,” said Orlando Conetta, a computer scientist and head of research and development at Pinsents.

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測題目：

1. What is the Verifi belong to Linklaters?

A. a client’s name

B. a subsidiary company

C. computer program

D. a robot

2. How long does it take to search a single customer name for a trained junior lawyer generally?

A. 12 minutes

B. 14 minutes

C. 31 minutes

D. an hour

3. What has already contributed to a reduction of about 31,000 jobs in the legal sector according to Deloitte?

A. technology

B. paralegals

C. law schools

D. clients

4. What is the meaning of ‘Uberisation’ among legal firms?

A. build relationship with clients by app

B. globalization

C. capitalization

D. impressed by technology deeply

[1] 答案 C. computer program

解釋：年利達律師事務(wù)所開發(fā)了電腦程序Verifi，可以篩查14家英國及歐洲監(jiān)管登記機構(gòu)的材料，為銀行核查客戶姓名。

[2] 答案 A. 12 minutes

解釋：年利達銀行業(yè)合伙人Edward Chan說：“以前，受過訓(xùn)練的初級律師檢索一位客戶的姓名平均需要12分鐘。”

[3] 答案 A. technology

解釋：德勤(Deloitte)最近的一項研究表明，技術(shù)進步已導(dǎo)致法律業(yè)減少了約3.1萬個工作崗位。

[4] 答案 D. impressed by technology deeply

解釋：有人推斷，法律行業(yè)將迎來“優(yōu)步化”(Uberisation)，成為被技術(shù)顛覆的下一個目標(biāo)。