Innovation and bright legal minds working together to clean up, reinvigorate and unlock the multi-billion latent legal market for consumers and entrepreneurs.
Every day there is a new revelation in the media about how AI and robots are increasingly affecting change in our daily lives. However very little is written about how as entrepreneurs we could benefit directly from professional services using AI to help us to start, develop and grow our business.
So it’s exciting for me, as an ‘entrepreneur lawyer’ to throw a spotlight on the legal sector where some standard services are now being executed by AI and/or robots (intelligent machines) instead of a human lawyer.
The sector is displaying encouraging trends where increasing numbers of new AI Apps and Bots are being deployed by lawyers, law firms and new entrants to the legal market, often free of charge and helping to engage and protect a latent consumer market and empower the SME business market.
On the consumer side one of the biggest successes reported so far is ‘Do Not Pay’, a bot created by Stanford student Joshua Browder at the start of 2016 to help people appeal parking fines. Recently in the UK, 4 Cambridge students created ‘LawBot’ which conveys insight and advice for victims of crime. On the other side of the world there’s Robot Lawyers Australia where consumers can avail of free services relating to minor offences.
The market is simmering across the global legal spectrum in the ‘social good’ realm but I envisage it’s about to kick-off positively for entrepreneurs. Robot Lawyer LISA - the ‘Legal Intelligence Support Assistant’ – was unleashed a fortnight ago. LISA initially generates free NDAs (confidentiality agreements) for entrepreneurs, business owners and consumers. LISA can help you:
- Get your basic legal questions answered and documents drafted and an agreement achieved on terms that are fair and reasonable for both sides;
- Find the middle ground for you and ‘the other side’ through guidance to help you move forward without the costly interference of a human lawyer on each side; and
- Assess whether you fall within the law or outside.
It’s sometimes said that “NDA’s aren’t worth the paper they are written on.” But you and I need legally watertight documentation rather than 3rd party NDA documents or free downloaded templates that do not secure our ideas nor help our businesses grow. The idea that free, human lawyer equivalent, high quality, cost & time effective AI App and Bot legal services and products like LISA, LawBot, DoNotPay etc help us ‘help ourselves’ is coming to fruition, and here to stay.
I predict a proliferation of these kinds of new legal services and products. These innovations in the legal sector should be embraced by all sides, showing the benefits to each stakeholder, from the lawyer through consumer and to the entrepreneur.
Author: Chrissie Lightfoot, one of the World’s Top Women Futurists.CEO AI Tech Support Ltd & CEO Entrepreneur Lawyer Ltd