Search “What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)” on Google and you’ll get more answers than you can shake a stick at. Ask what that means in law firms and you’ll be there for hours…
A simple explanation is:
“the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.”
So, it’s all about computers having inbuilt “intelligence”, that enables them to learn from experience and to thereby improve their problem-solving capabilities.
Robots
One example would be a robot in a car factory performing tasks that used to be done by humans. The robot completes them faster and cheaper, helping to improve the factory’s productivity and thereby improve the bottom-line.
The next stage with AI is to enable those robots to learn and to improve. So, perhaps they learn to spot a car on the production line that isn’t up to the standards demanded by quality control.
Data Analytics and Integration
Another example might be enabling you to pick – from the massive amount of data that’s freely available on the internet – just bits that are from a specific source and that provide specific information. There are tools available that can do it for you, but add in some data analytics and AI, and you can turn that data into easy to understand and valuable intelligence. So maybe you want to run a credit check on a business client. You could look at information from Companies House. And review their website. Even take a look at their social media account. But using AI, that information could automatically be collected and transformed into a credit score, which is much more meaningful and easy to understand.
So why should I care?
In legal firms, like other service industries that don’t actually manufacture something, AI can be used to drive competitive advantage. AI applied to disparate pieces of data, for example, is helping businesses to understand their own and their clients’ businesses better. Which in turn is helping them to grow their revenues and market shares faster than their peers.
AI is already being used to answer legal questions online. Read our post here about using chatbots in online services and watch the video. You might also enjoy our post here about machine learning.
Want to know more?
If you’d like to know more about how AI and technology is being applied in innovative ways to law firms, then get in touch with us at Legal Workflow – contact us by phone on 01243 859605 or email us at enquiries@legalworkflow.com.
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