Benjamin Alarie and Abdi Aidid are legal experts who are heavily involved in the development of legal technology. They are releasing a new book, The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better later this year.
Benjamin Alarie is a tax law professor at the University of Toronto and has been in the tax law profession since 2004. He became interested in the future of legal education and how artificial intelligence will affect the profession, which led him to co-found Blue J, a legal technology company in Toronto. On the other hand, Abdi Aidid practiced as a commercial litigator in New York before becoming the Vice President of Legal Research at Blue J. He led the team of lawyers and research analysts and helped develop AI-informed predictive tools, which predict how future courts are likely to rule on new legal situations. Abdi is now a full-time law professor at the University of Toronto, teaching subjects like torts and civil procedure.
Naming the book "The Legal Singularity" is a big claim by the authors, so we asked them to explain what they meant by it. According to Abdi Aidid, the legal singularity is the practical elimination of legal uncertainty and its impact on our institutions and society. It is a future state where the law is unknowable in real time and on demand, and we can start doing things that we were not previously able to do because the law was either difficult to ascertain or we did not have a normative consensus around what the law ought to be. The concept of the legal singularity is related to the idea of a technological singularity, but it is not a totalizing event like the technological singularity. Instead, it is an equally socially important concept that focuses on how technological improvements affect the law and related institutions.
Alarie and Aidid suggest that the legal market needs to address bias in AI tools by keeping humans in the loop in arbitration and judicial contexts for a significant period of time. They believe that even as the legal singularity approaches and people begin to have confidence in algorithmic decision making, humans should still be involved in the process to audit machine-generated decisions. They argue that this is necessary because the law deals with deeply human questions, and there is more at stake than just ones and zeros. They believe that humans have to contribute to the legal system's notions of mercy, fairness, empathy, and procedural justice. They also suggest that involving humans in the process helps to inform the technology before disastrous consequences and helps to refine it. Therefore, they emphasize the need for human review of machine judgments, which will lead to accelerated learning in the law. Furthermore, they highlight that the legal market needs to distinguish between the kinds of problems that are a reflection of unaddressed social problems or those that are new technological problems. They stress that the legal market is still collectively responsible for resolving these issues.
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Transcript
An Overview of the 2022 Partner Compensation Survey with Law360's Craig Savitzky and MLA's Jeffrey Lowe (TGIR Ep. 178)
It's Not Legal Technology That's the Problem… It's the Culture - ALM's Tomek Jankowski (TGIR Ep. 177)
Preparing for the Legal Team of the Future - Adam Curphey (TGIR Ep. 176)
What Does a Post-Pandemic Conference Look Like? Martha Breil on ILTACon (TGIR Ep.175)
A Data Diva and Two Geeks Talk Data Privacy - Debbie Reynolds
Intentional Leadership is about Owning Your Purpose - HBR's Axelle Flemming
The Future of Legal Innovation Will Be Built In By Design - Olga Mack
Teaching (and Pressuring) Law Professors to Teach Technology - Katie Brown
11 Steps Law Firms Can Take to Stop "Women Leaving Law" - Laura Leopard
Increased Revenue, Profits, and Efficiencies through "Smarter Collaboration" - Dr. Heidi Gardner
Aliza Shatzman - Turning a Horrible Judicial Clerkship Experience into the Legal Accountability Project
HyperDraft's Tony Thai and Sean Greaney - The Compatibility of BigLaw and Innovative Lawyers
Leading with Love as a Business Strategy with Jeff Ma and Frank Danna
Engineering Serendipity with The Houston Ion's Joey Sanchez
Diane Rodriguez and Beth Adelman on AALL's Preparation for an In-Person Denver Conference
Peter Baumann: There is So Much Value In Your Data… Once You Control the Risks
Law360's Kerry Benn on 2022 Summer Associate Preferences, Challenges, and Options
Colin McCarthy of Legal Operators on Building a LegalOps Community
Sonja Ebron and Ed Walters Collaborate on Courtroom5 and Fastcase to Help Pro Se Litigants Access Justice
After-Hours with NRF's Zack Barnes
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