Rise of the machines

We spoke to Fiona Chute – litigation lawyer with Brodies and one of the Law Society of Scotland’s accredited legal technologists – about the ever-developing importance of ‘lawtech’.

We live in a world increasingly affected by technology and, even in a sector as venerable as the law, it is an element that has the potential to significantly change the way we work. In recognition of this, the Law Society of Scotland has developed a specific legal technologist accreditation to recognise those at the vanguard of the ‘lawtech’ movement.

Currently, there are 18 recognised legal technologists, one of whom is Fiona Chute, Senior Associate at Brodies LLP. “I think it is fairly unusual to come at it from the lawyer side,” Fiona says. “Most of the people who are accredited legal technologists are IT professionals who develop technology; so far, relatively few lawyers have developed this extra capability and achieved accreditation.

“In a very basic sense, a legal technologist is someone who has expertise in applying technology in the legal sector, but the Law Society of Scotland introduced its particular accreditation to recognise expertise that is out of the ordinary,” Fiona explains.

“In terms of what a legal technologist does, I think the role varies across the sector. For some, it’s about innovating new systems, for others it’s about trying to help lawyers work more efficiently with things like document automation.

“In my case, one of the things I see as part of my role is helping to bridge the gap between the colleagues we have in our Innovation and Technology team, and colleagues on the legal side. I can speak enough of both languages to help my Innovation and Technology colleagues understand what the lawyers need, to create a solution that is useful, and to make it happen more quickly with fewer iterations required.”

Right time, right place

A certain amount of fortuitous timing marked Fiona’s own entry into the world of lawtech.

“I started my traineeship in 2012 and I qualified as a solicitor in 2014, just as we were starting to move from paper files to everything being digital. Now we have moved to an almost paperless way of working,” she says.

“Around that time, the Scottish courts were also starting to realise that the volume of paper they were receiving was overwhelming and, in certain cases, they started to ask for documents to be lodged in a searchable electronic format with hyperlinked indices. As one of the more junior members of the team, I learnt how to do electronic bundling of evidence in a way the court would accept, and I helped my more senior colleagues – who had decades of experience – adapt to this new way of working.

“Also around the same time, we were just starting to use things like e-discovery platforms. I had to learn how to use these pieces of legal technology in order to deliver a service to clients, and to do what the courts wanted us to do. As I was doing this, I realised that some of it was saving me a huge amount of time. Had I done it all manually, I would have been there all night, but I had software doing it for me instead.”

With the value of technological hindsight, such solutions seem eminently sensible and obvious, however revolutionary they might have appeared at the time. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are on the cusp of a potentially even less-predictable age.

“One big project that we are undertaking at the moment is experimenting with various AI products. There are quite a few legal publishers, to which we are already subscribed, who are now trialling AI products that integrate with their databases. Instead of searching to find something, you can ask the system a question in natural language and get an answer. We’re also testing more general AI products and those we’ve developed in-house,” Fiona says.

“As a lawyer, you absolutely have to make sure that the answer it gives you is accurate – you can’t blindly rely on what the AI has given you. But the idea is that it will give you a good starting point and help direct your research. We are trialling those systems at the moment and we have found that the technology is quite nascent; there are areas where it is doing well and you can definitely see the use cases for it, and there are other areas where there’s more work to be done before it is released more widely.

“We’ve also been using Microsoft Copilot, which is not legal sector-specific but it is integrated with Microsoft software – Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams – and unlike with ChatGPT, any data you input into Copilot will be kept within your firm’s boundary, making the data private and secure. So we are evaluating those products, learning what we can, and trying to find use cases that will make work more efficient for our colleagues, and in turn, for our clients.”

The reality of AI

With such developments comes the obvious question: if AI systems become too effective, do they pose a threat to those working in the legal profession? Fiona doesn’t think so.

“I think there will be certain tasks that will increasingly be done using AI or machine learning. But overall, the feeling I have is that a human lawyer using technology will outperform both a lawyer not using technology, and technology on its own. It will supplement and assist but not replace,” she says.

“It is currently the case that we wouldn’t give advice to a client that simply parrots what we find in a textbook or in case law; we analyse that information and apply it to the client’s specific circumstances, think about that particular client’s risk appetite, that particular client’s commercial interests, and other factors, too. I think there is always going to be a requirement for that kind of lateral thinking and insight that technology will only get so far with. AI will assist with the bits that it can do really well and free us up to do the bits that only a human can do.”

In fact, as the first wave of AI fails to quite reach the potential that people perhaps anticipated – or even feared – Fiona believes we might currently be in something of a slight enthusiasm slump when it comes to technology.

“Within Beehive – our innovation forum at Brodies – we’ve talked about the Gartner Hype Cycle, which shows that people tend to get overexcited about a new concept or piece of technology first of all, then when it fails to meet up to their expectations, people fall into the ‘trough of disillusionment’. At that point, because it can’t do everything that they want it to do perfectly, there is a temptation to write it off. But then we reach a happy medium where the technology is adopted but people understand its abilities and its limitations,” Fiona says.

“That is what has been happening with AI. It’s now a year and a half since ChatGPT came out and people have realised that, as they have played with it, it brings in a lot of errors or it hallucinates certain facts. Some people have decided they don’t need to engage with it any more. But we’re investing time in trying to understand the things that AI can do and the areas where it actually could be of benefit because, we think, in the future it will help.

“I read recently about Amara’s Law, which says that people often overestimate the short-term impact of technology but then underestimate the long-term impact. They believe things will change in a year, when it will actually be more incremental than that. But they also underestimate just how different things could be in 10 or 15 years. That certainly happened with the internet and email, and I think we’ll see the same thing with AI. We’ve certainly got challenges around its use but I think there is an attitude of curiosity and we want to know more about what it can do.”

Find out more about the Law Society of Scotland’s legal technologist accreditation here. The Society's Legal Tech Conference 2024 is taking place on Tuesday 25th June and is free to attend, plus you can come along in person or join online. 

Written by Matt Lamy