Documents

15 reports and papers on law and technology, divided between corporate, academic, professional bodies and nonprofit categories:

author title category year
Alari et al How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law Academic 2018
The Law Society Algorithms in the Criminal Justice System Professional Body 2019
Vinson & Moppett Digital Pro Bono: Leveraging Technology to Provide Access to Justice Academic 2019
Deloitte Ltd Objections overruled : The case for disruptive technology in the legal profession Corporate 2017
The Law Society Horizon Scanning: Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession Professional Body 2018
Jackson Human-centered legal tech: integrating design in legal education Academic 2016
Legal Services Board Technology and Innovation in Legal Services Professional Body 2018
Kerikmäe et al Legal Technology for Law Firms: Determining Roadmaps for Innovation Academic 2018
The Law Society Lawtech Adoption Research Professional Body 2019
Caserta & Madsen The Legal Profession in the Era of Digital Capitalism: Disruption or New Dawn? Academic 2019
Bench-Capon et al A history of AI and Law in 50 papers: 25 years of the international conference on AI and Law Academic 2012
Schoonmaker Withstanding Disruptive Innovation: How Attorneys Will Adapt and Survive Impending Challenges from Automation and Nontraditional Legal Services Providers Academic 2019
The Engine Room Technology for Legal Empowerment: A Global Review Nonprofit 2019
Solicitors Regulation Authority Technology and legal services Professional Body 2018
Yu & Ali What’s Inside the Black Box? AI Challenges for Lawyers and Researchers Academic Yu & Ali

Theme Discovery

A 16 topic model using the R STM Package (https://www.structuraltopicmodel.com/) was created, giving the following topics (manually named):

Fig1: Topics and Correlations

Fig1: Topics and Correlations

Contrast in Emphasis

Of the themes discovered the largest contrast between categories was the emphasis on users and access between nonprofit and other authors:

Fig 2: Users and Access Emphasis

Fig 2: Users and Access Emphasis

Another divergence was the data-centric view of ‘online services’ from the corporate report in contrast to the more organisational-centric view from other sources:

Fig 3: Data-Centric Online Services Emphasis

Fig 3: Data-Centric Online Services Emphasis

Topic Comparisons

Comparing the ‘Users and Access’ topic with the System Development one illustrates the different emphasis from user-centric to firm-centric

Fig 4: User topic compared to systems development

Fig 4: User topic compared to systems development

We also see by comparing historic AI research with modern approaches the evolution from rules-based, logic-based systems to connectionism and learning-from-example:

Fig 5: Machine Learning compared to Reason and Argument

Fig 5: Machine Learning compared to Reason and Argument

..perhaps the time is ripe for re-integrating these two poles?