ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how digital technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) reshape the work of lawyers and the organisations that they work for. We overview how AI is being used in legal services, and identify three distinct impacts: AI substitutes automatable legal tasks; AI enhances productivity of lawyers giving advice on the basis of AI-generated outputs; and legal expertise itself augments the deployment of AI when lawyers work as part of a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) encompassing a range of relevant professional expertise. Our survey of English solicitors shows that AI deployment is associated with MDTs, and that MDTs are less prevalent in law firms than in corporations. This latter finding is due to challenges that law firms face as mono-professional partnerships. We find evidence from our interviews that their challenges lie not so much in capital constraints, relaxed via alternative business structures in the UK, but in traditional law firms’ inability to recruit and retain talent other than those in the legal profession. Inadequate adaption is occurring in law firms shifting their structure from a funnel shape to a rocket shape with junior lawyers in partnership tournament working alongside a growing number of non-lawyers whose career paths offer no prospect of partnership.

摘要

本文讨论了包括人工智能（AI）在内的数字技术如何重塑律师及其所服务的组织的工作。我们概述了AI在法律服务中的使用方式，并确定了三种不同的影响：AI替代了可自动化的法律任务；人工智能提高了基于人工智能产生的结果提供咨询意见的律师的生产力；当律师作为跨学科团队（MDT）的一部分工作时，法律专业知识本身会增强AI的部署，该团队包含一系列相关专业知识。我们对英语律师的调查显示，人工智能的部署与MDT相关，而且律师事务所中MDT的普及率低于公司。后一个发现是由于律师事务所作为单专业合伙人所面临的挑战。我们从访谈中发现有证据表明，他们面临的挑战不仅仅在于资本约束，通过英国的其他业务结构放宽了约束，还在于传统律师事务所无法招募和挽留法律行业以外的人才。律师事务所的适应能力不足，是将其结构从漏斗形转变为火箭形，合伙制锦标赛中的初级律师与越来越多的非律师职业伙伴合作的非律师一起工作。