Artificial Intelligence in The Legal Profession: San Miguel, Manila

SAN
BEDA UNIVERSITY
San Miguel, Manila

Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Profession

A Case Study and Commentary
Presented to the Faculty of College of Law

In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements in Legal Writing for the Course of Juris
Doctor – College of Law (Non-Thesis)

PAULA BUMANGLAG
JESSIELA CASTILLO
ANGEL CINCO
ANDREA DE GUZMAN
CHAT PANES

July 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION
I. How will the rise of Artificial Intelligence and technology be the end of
capitalism?
Ever since the beginning of civilization, people has been making progress used
for survival, hobby or other things to sustain our needs/wants and to preserve
ourselves. Progress in making stone weapon up to the creation of armaments and
destructive weapons for example, help people to survive the changes that occurred
in the past. Now, all progress, changes and developments has been made and felt
through technologies and artificial intelligence.
The rise of technology and artificial intelligence in the world makes it easier for
developments and changes to happen. It is through technology that we have
buildings, machines and other things which helps us much easier to produce and
do our jobs or works efficient. Since technology constitutes great potential for all
the system of society and artificial intelligence is being made or develop today,
markets, firms or businesses are needing them to produce efficient products with
low cost and at the same time, for the works to be done effectively to make or earn
profit. Since firms or businesses need technology for the services in the market,
the need for labor force would be limited and there will be a need for specialization
of skill, that will be the basis of labor.
Technology and Artificial Intelligence can replace workers because they can do
everything as humans can do and they are program to do task with accuracy and
preciseness since information are stored to them. The work on Artificial Intelligence
is becoming advance because of the advancement in technologies in developed
countries and because of the likeliness that they have to humans. Artificial
Intelligence with the help of technology can do face recognition, language and
speech recognition, etc. The Amazon Go cashier-less for example, is being used
in New York store without the need for workers to secure the store and payments
on the product that is being bought. This is a new progress in the world and other
Bumanglag // Castillo // Cinco // De Guzman // Panes

big program developers or multinational corporations are competing for innovation
such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.
These Multinational Corporations are competing for dominance in the
technology and artificial intelligence and they are powerful and wealthy since most
people, even businesses and firms, have and preferred their products. And since
they dominate the market, capitalism will end because of the progress and
developments that is happening today with the technologies and artificial
intelligence. Markets will be left out in their means and ends because of the
technologies that they need, replacing labor and relying to machines to produce
efficient goods and services. That is not everything, because every individual
worker would be replaced by machines and will be left with nothing to do but to rely
on it for the jobs. When this happens, there will be no income for the people to
sustain and preserve themselves in every day. And society would not have time to
adapt to the fast changes that will happen so the government will have to make a
solution to the problem that will occur in the future for the people such as taxes.
Although developments and progress happen faster with the rise technologies and
artificial intelligence, the end of capitalism will not happen sooner in the world
because not all state are that develop and advanced. Other countries will be left
behind, but not that far, and the gap with the developed countries will be bigger.
The rise of technology and artificial intelligence will end capitalism to start another
one with the technology and artificial intelligence itself.
In the current situation of the world where works are more easily to do with
machines, it is always possible to happen that the human labor force will be replace
with the robotic labor force whereas majority of the humans live subsistence level
of income, while the upper class who are those in control of the robots are earning
more which makes them build their empires. If this happens humans will find

themselves in a situation where they have to go out and compete for whatever paid
jobs are still available to humans in the robot-dominated workforce.
The rise of artificial intelligence will also be the fall innovation. Innovation will
be much harder in Artificial Intelligence kind of economy because innovation will
increasingly be defined by world views of a single person rather than the thinking
power of many, what will likely to happen is that we‘re just going to be stuck in the
same AI‘s but there‘s really nothing new about it. Every industry has a potential to
be automated, everything can be replaced by a robot and most of the things that
humans do can be done by a robot. Artificial intelligence can dominate us, it is a
brand-new class of capital which automates the last part of humanity which is
thinking, and should not just recognize AI as just a new form of technology.
______________________
1
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/07/02/how-artificial-intelli gence-
could-kill-capitalism/#1549fa0f4222 https://chatbotsmagazine.com/why-ai-will-
break-capitalism-14a6ad2f76da https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-ai-
everything-you-need-to-know-abo ut-artificial-intelligence/

History of Artificial Intelligence
As the wide world revolves, and the Artificial Intelligence technology
increasingly becoming integrated in everyday lives of every human, it is more
becoming leading topic of random discussion in the world. Meanwhile,
according to the discussion of Barnard Marr in his research, titled “What are
the negative impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI)” he 1 provides that AI is
contributing a lot of advantages and will continue to provide many benefits for
our modern world, however along with the good, there will also be negative
consequences.
Moreover, to further discuss the above topic, it is proper to introduce first
the history of Artificial Intelligence in this part of research. Thus according to the
brief history in the magazine, with a title 2 “A (very) brief history of Artificial
Intelligence” of Buchanan (2019) the beginnings of artificial intelligence are traced
to ―philosophy, fiction, and imagination.ǁ Further, Philosophers have also floated
the possibility of intelligent machines as a literary device to help us define what it
means to be human. As cited samples in the above magazine, Gottfried Wil- helm
Leibniz, seemed to see the possibility of mechanical reasoning devices using rules
of logic to settle disputes.
As example of mechanical reasoning devices, chess was cited on the
above above magazine that is quite obviously an enterprise that requires
―thoughtǁ. Thus, it is not indeed too surprising, then, that chess-playing
1
Bernard Marr (2019). What are the negative impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Retrieved from.
https://bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=1827
2
Bruce Buchaman (2019). A (very) brief history of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved
from.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070926023314/http://www.aaai.org/AITo
pics/assets/PDF/AIMag26-04-016.pdf

machines of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most notably ―the
Turk,ǁ were exhibited as an ―intelligent machinesǁ and even fooled some
people into believing the machines were playing autonomously. The history
was begun in 1950, when Alan Turing developed the “Turing Test” as a way of
identifying machines that had intelligence indistinguishable from humans. The
proposed test consist of ―text-only conversations between two participants.
Further, he also argued that if a human participant is unable to tell the
difference between communicating with a human versus a machine then that
machine can be thought of as intelligent.
Thus, there are some arguments about replacing human by an Artificial
Intelligence, there are discussion that AI could replace human in different
aspect of life. One of those example is 3―Alice who ran during presidential
election in Russia, and did receive ―couple thousand votes. Further, to be
correct, ―Aliceǁ was not a ―she, but an artificial intelligence (AI) system.
Also, ―Aliceǁ is not the only AI system to run for public office. As cited by
Selimi, (2019), last year, during a mayoral race in Tama, a part of Japan‘s
capital Tokyo, there was also a machine named ―Michihito Matsudaǁ who
placed third with also a couple thousand votes. Alongside
―Aliceǁ and ―Michihito Matsudaǁ is ―Sam, a machine hailing from New
Zealand. ―Sam is being created to run in the 2020 general elections and has been
called the first virtual politician in the world. (Selimi, 2019)
3
Sabin Selimi. (2019). Can Artificial Intelligence change the future of Politics.
Retrieved from.
https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/can-artificial-intelligence-change-thefuture-
of-politics-28156

II. Lawyering in the Philippines
Technology is often blamed for destroying traditional working-class jobs in
sectors like manufacturing and retail. However, blue collar jobs aren‘t the only one
who are at risk.
The legal profession — tradition-bound and labor-heavy — is on the cusp of a
transformation in which artificial-intelligence platforms dramatically affect how legal
work gets done.
Those platforms will mine documents for evidence that will be useful in
litigation, to review and create contracts, raise red flags within companies to identify
potential fraud and other misconduct or do legal research and perform due
diligence before corporate acquisitions.
Those are all tasks that — for the moment at least — are largely the
responsibility of flesh-and-blood attorneys.
Increasing automation of the legal industry promises to increase efficiency and
save client’s money, but could also cut jobs in the sector as the technology
becomes responsible for tasks currently performed by humans.
Advocates of AI, however, argue there could actually be an increase in the
sector‘s labor force as the technology drives costs down and makes legal services
more affordable to greater numbers of people.
―It‘s like the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, said Noory Bechor, CEO
of LawGeex, a leading AI-powered platform for legal contract review.
―Legal, right now, I think is in the place that other industries were 10 and 15 years
ago, like travel,ǁ he said.
Replacing drudge work

Bechor‘s transition from lawyer to AI advocate came as a result of his own
experience working at a large law firm in Israel.
―I did a lot of contract work for small companies, as well as for investors and
multinational companies, he said.
The work was drudge-like and often almost mechanical.
―For me, it was mind-blowing that I needed to reinvent the wheel each time I
needed to create a contract or each time I needed to review a contract.
And, ―I was feeling this pain, day in and day out, working these crazy hours, he
said.
But Bechor also began realizing that as he reviewed more and more contracts, he
became better at doing the tedious work.
―You get the hang of it, he said. ―You have it in your head what a contract should
and should not contain.
―That‘s what convinced me that a significant part of this could be automated,ǁ
Bechor said.
The LawGeex platform, he said, ―can take a new contract, one that it‘s never seen
before, read it and then compare it to a database of every similar contract that it‘s
seen in the past.ǁ
Like other AI platforms, LawGeex also learns from each review it performs — just
like Bechor and other humans in the profession learned to do as young lawyers.
What machines do better than people
One question raised by the introduction of AI legal platforms is how well they do
their jobs compared to a flesh-and-blood lawyer, who has years of experience
under her belt.

Will the machine miss things that a good lawyer with a lot of experience would
otherwise catch? Proponents don‘t think so.
―That‘s an argument that been refuted quite a bit,ǁ said Jay Leib, founder and
managing member of NexLP. Leib‘s Chicago-based company offers
eDiscovery, an AI platform that searches documents for information relevant to
lawsuits and other litigation.
―Can you miss anything? Sure, Leib said of AI legal tools.
―But since 1985, we‘ve known that human beings are not very good at keyword
searches,ǁ he said. ―There‘s this fallacy that human beings looking at documents
is the gold standard. Not true. They‘re missing things.ǁ
He also said the explosion in the amount of electronic data generated today makes
it hard for human workers to keep up.
―There‘s just so much more data now that you need these technologies to boil
the ocean for youǁ and find relevant material, Leib said.
Leib said NexLP is ―not just looking at the textǁ of a document or email.
―It‘s looking at the tone of the conversation, who sent it,ǁ to see if the item should
be flagged for review in litigation, he said.
Leib also pointed out that computers ―don‘t get tired, they don‘t get hungry, they
don‘t sleep in.ǁ
―All of the things that are biological problems that can happen to a human being
can‘t happen to computers.ǁ
The big international law firm Reed Smith recently put that question to the test with
RAVN ACE, the AI platform from RAVN Systems. Reed Smith had RAVN conduct
a review of hundreds of pages of documents.

―We took a deal that we‘d already done, which we‘d done manually,ǁ said Lucy
Dillon, chief knowledge officer of Reed Smith. ―And we put it through the RAVN
system to see how it compared. And it compared very favorably.ǁ
Dillon said the RAVN platform ―didn‘t always get it rightǁ when asked to identify
and pull out certain items in contracts. But lawyers were able to add information to
their queries and improve their results.
Plus, the platform ―picked up some things that we had missedǁ when humans did
their first review of the documents, she said. ―The system had high levels of
accuracy. And it was a great tool to use.ǁ
And the RAVN was faster than its human counterparts. Much faster.
―We‘re talking minutes versus days,ǁ Dillon said.

Large firms beginning to get on board
The legal sector has been slow to change, technologically or otherwise.
But that‘s changing as firms, particularly larger ones, begin to see the advantage
of AI.
ROSS Intelligence makes a legal research platform based on IBM‘s cognitive
computing system Watson, which is being used by a number of the world‘s biggest
law firms, including Dentons, as well as Latham & Watkins.
Andrew Arruda, ROSS Intelligence‘s CEO and co-founder, said his company ―is
working with lawyers from every type of organization — in-house, big, medium,
small, solo [practitioners] — as well as law schools and bar associations.ǁ
He noted that his company‘s still young platform ―is already saving 20 to 30 hours
of research time per caseǁ for its clients.

Leib of NexLP noted at ―about 70 percent of the cost of discoveryǁ — the process
of exchanging information that is relevant to a legal case or review
— ―is human cost, people looking through documents and emails and all different
things.ǁ
―If we could reduce that from 70 percent to 2 percent, we‘re looking at dramatic
cost savings,ǁ he said.
―That‘s just money back in the hands of corporations and business,ǁ Leib said.
―It really attacks the bottom line.ǁ
Leib believes that customers rather than partners will determine how quickly law
firms adopt AI platforms.
―I think companies are going to demand that their firms use these technologies
because they‘re not going to want to pay these feesǁ for having humans sift through
vast amounts of documents, Leib said.
Asked when he thinks AI will be in use broadly across the legal industry, Leib said,
―I think the time frame here is between 2020 and 2025.ǁ
Bechor of LawGeex said that the current lack of widespread adoption of AI by law
firms has the effect of keeping prices high in the legal sector, for now.
―There is a cost to this inefficiency,ǁ Bechor said.
―Legal is now considered a premium product,ǁ he said. ―It‘s not something that
a lot of people and businesses can afford.ǁ
―If you can‘t beat ‘em...ǁ
If AI solutions become pervasive, law firms may cut staff.

A Deloitte Insight report released in 2016 said that ―profound reformsǁ will occur
in the legal sector over the next decade, estimating that nearly 40 percent of jobs
in the legal sector could end up being automated in the long term.
A 2013 Oxford University paper, titled ―The Future of Employment: How
Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? ǁsuggests that lower-level employees
at law firms are more likely to feel the effects of downsizing as a result of AI
technology — at least in the near term.
―We find that paralegals and legal assistants .... [are] in the high risk category,
the paper‘s authors wrote.
―At the same time, lawyers, which rely on labor input from legal assistants, are in
the low risk category,ǁ the authors wrote.
Bechor from LawGeex agrees.
―There‘s a romantic notion of AI being able to replace all lawyers,ǁ he said. ―I
don‘t see that as something that will happen in the next couple of years.ǁ
Arruda of ROSS Intelligence is even more optimistic, believing that AI will increase
the total number of jobs in the legal profession.
―I think we will see a rise of more jobs in the legal marketǁ as a result of AI,ǁ
Arruda said. ―At the firms where ROSS is at, we see more work being done, more
clients being able to be served, and therefore not a decrease in staff, but an
increase in productivity and output. He also saw another benefit.
―At present, Arruda said, ―the majority of individuals who need a lawyer cannot
afford one. Yet on the other hand, [many] law graduates are saddled in debt and
cannot find work.

Leib and Arruda also dismissed concerns that the expansion of AI in the legal
sector would make it more difficult for young lawyers to acquire necessary
experience through brute-force gruntwork.
―Theoretically, attorneys can be more efficient from day one because of the
technology, Leib said.
Arruda said, ―This question gets asked a lot when new technology comes out.
Think of the calculator, for example.
―But I think it‘s the wrong question, really,ǁ Arruda said. ―The activities that AI
excels at are not [the ones people] typically excel at — think data
retrieval.
Perhaps the best take came from Sofia Lingos, a lawyer and board member of the
Legal Technology Resource Center of the American Bar Association. Last year at
a roundtable discussion hosted by the American Bar Association, the moderator
asked if lawyers should be afraid or encouraged by artificial intelligence.
―Both, Lingos answered.
―It is wise to embrace it now so that it can be a tool as opposed to an impediment.
No one wants to be competing against Watson, Lingos said, referring to IBM‘s
cognitive computer system.
―But if you can‘t beat ‗em, join ‘em!ǁ
Artificial intelligence is transforming the legal profession — and that includes legal
ethics. AI and similar cutting-edge technologies raise many complex ethical issues
and challenges that lawyers ignore at their peril.
At the same time, AI also holds out the promise of helping lawyers to meet their
ethical obligations, serve their clients more effectively, and promote access to

justice and the rule of law. What does AI mean for legal ethics, what should lawyers
do to prepare for these changes, and how could AI help improve the legal
profession?
In some ways, nothing has changed. The general ethical duties of lawyers remain
constant across technologies.
―The ethical issues raised by AI are in many ways not that different from the
ethical issues that lawyers have faced before,ǁ says David Curle, Director of the
Technology and Innovation Platform at the Legal Executive Institute of
Thomson Reuters. ―When using tools in their work, whether AI-powered tools or
any others, lawyers still have the same duties, including duties of supervision and
independent judgment.
And AI is not new to the legal profession, as Dr. Chris Mammen, IP litigation partner
at Hogan Lovells, points out:
On the one hand, everyone loves to talk about robot lawyers – but on the other
hand, we‘ve been using AI in our practice in a variety of ways for years. Think of
natural-language searching for online legal research, or the use of predictive
coding in discovery.
In other ways, everything has changed. AI and other innovative technologies are
creating, and will continue to create, novel situations that are not explicitly
addressed in the rules of legal ethics – and that the drafters of these rules never
even imagined.
Artificial Intelligence and the duties of lawyers: A brave new world
―We‘re navigating murky ethical areas where the law and rules haven‘t caught up
yet with the technology,ǁ according to ethics and disciplinary lawyer Megan Zavieh.

―We‘re trying to apply rules that were written based on certain ways of practicing
law and now trying to apply them to very different ways of working.ǁ
Take, for example, social media. The original rules governing lawyer advertising
and client communication were drafted well before the age of Facebook, Twitter,
and LinkedIn.
Artificial intelligence is another area where the rules of legal ethics are playing
catch-up with the technology. Here are some of the ethical issues raised by AI.
Duties of Competence and Diligence
As lawyers rely more and more on AI and other technologies, and as those tools
become more advanced and more complex, lawyers must be sure that they
understand how those technologies work.
More than 30 states have adopted a comment to the Model Rules of Professional
Conduct making clear that ―[t]o maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a
lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the
benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.ǁ And artificial intelligence
is most definitely ―relevant technology.ǁ Indeed, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew
McAfee wrote in a cover story for the Harvard Business Review, AI is ―[t]he most
important general-purpose technology of our era.ǁ
For artificial intelligence, one of the most notable issues is the ―black boxǁ
challenge. A lawyer submits a query to an AI-powered tool, it goes into a
―black box, and the AI-based solution provides an answer. How much does a
lawyer need to know about what goes on inside that black box?
Lawyers are not computer scientists or technologists, and nobody would expect
them to appreciate the algorithm-level workings of AI systems. But at the same

time, they must have some basic understanding of how the tools they utilize
generally work.
David Curle of Thomson Reuters puts it well: ―If lawyers are using tools that might
suggest answers to legal questions, they need to understand the capabilities and
limitations of the tools, and they must consider the risks and benefits of those
answers in the context of the specific case they are working on.
Perhaps the most widely discussed example of balancing the risks and rewards of
artificial intelligence is the self-driving car. Far from being a rote exercise,
programming an autonomous vehicle involves difficult choices that will generate
extensive ethical and legal debate in the years ahead. In fact, these debates are
already taking place, in the legislatures of the 40-plus states that have passed, or
have considered passing, laws to govern self-driving cars.
Duties of Supervision
Depending on who (or what) a lawyer works with, the duty of competence includes
a duty of supervision. As Chris Mammen of Hogan Lovells explains, ―If a lawyer
delegates something to subordinates, whether junior lawyers or paralegals, there‘s
an ethical duty to make sure the work has been done competently. And this duty
extends to AI-based tools. One way of analyzing the issue is that the lawyer who
reviews and signs off has appropriately supervised the AI.
And just as there are some tasks that a lawyer simply cannot delegate to a
paralegal or legal assistant, there are some tasks that are not appropriate for
handling by artificial intelligence – and an attorney must know how to tell them
apart.
―One way of framing this issue is automation versus augmentation, states Dr.
Tonya Custis, a Research Director at Thomson Reuters who leads a team of
research scientists developing natural-language and search technologies for legal

research. ―There may be some tasks that we shouldn‘t automate. For these tasks,
AI can help attorneys do their jobs, but AI can‘t do their jobs completely. So the
question becomes: where do we draw that line?
Just as lawyers can over-delegate work to subordinates, they can also under-
delegate, causing them to serve their clients less efficiently. In the context of
artificial intelligence, one can imagine underutilization of AI – for example, a lawyer
not using AI even though it could help that lawyer serve the client better.
In fact, given some of the psychological attributes commonly associated with
lawyers – a focus on detail, a desire for control, an aversion to risk – the greater
danger might very well be underutilization of, rather than overreliance upon,
artificial intelligence.
―Having worked in AI for the legal profession for a long time, I know how the
customer base is conservative,ǁ says Tonya Custis of Thomson Reuters. ―With
Westlaw natural-language searching, lawyers will ask, ‗Why am I getting results
that don‘t use the specific words I searched for?‘ You need to explain to the
customer how the process works.ǁ
Unauthorized Practice of Law
One of the most exciting developments in legal technology is the rise of legal
chatbots, AI-powered programs that interact with users who have legal issues by
simulating a conversation or dialogue. These chatbots are now being used to do
perform such tasks as fight parking tickets, advise victims of crimes, or draft privacy
policies or non-disclosure agreements.
These chatbots can be very helpful to consumers, especially consumers who
cannot afford the high cost of hiring a lawyer, and they could help bridge the
yawning ―justice gapǁ that exists in both the United States and around the world.

But they do raise the issue of unauthorized practice of law, especially if the chatbot
or other tool is created or maintained by an attorney.
―We don‘t have rules and opinions that directly apply to these situations,ǁ
according to ethics lawyer Megan Zavieh. ―We have to look at the spirit of the
rules, and balance protecting the public with allowing for innovation in the delivery
of legal services.ǁ
I get calls from lawyers who have creative ideas for helping people with legal
problems, and they‘ll tell me that they talked to three other ethics lawyers who told
them ‗no.‘ That‘s the risk-aversion of our profession at work. But there has to be
a way to innovate and move forward, to help consumers in different ways, and to
close the justice gap, while at the same time not getting into disciplinary trouble.
Diversity and inclusion
Artificial intelligence operates by looking for patterns with large amounts of data.
This ―trainingǁ of AI is, as Dr. Tonya Custis of Thomson Reuters puts it,
―a statistical process — it will have biases.
But what are those biases, and are they fair? If the data used to ―trainǁ the AI
contains unfair biases, then the results of the AI could be correspondingly biased.
―AI requires data — data about actions and decisions made by humans,ǁ explains
David Curle. ―If you have a system that‘s reliant on hundreds of thousands or
millions of human decisions, and those humans had biases, there‘s a risk that the
same bias will occur in the AI.
For example, imagine training facial-recognition software on a group of people who
come from only one racial or ethnic background, or training voice-recognition
software using only male voices. The resulting AI tools will be biased – not as
inclusive as they should be, and not as useful either.

In the judicial system, one prominent example is judges making sentencing
decisions based in part on AI-driven software that claims to predict recidivism, the
likelihood of committing further crimes. There is concern over how the factors used
in the algorithms of such software could correlate with race, which judges are not
allowed to take into account when sentencing.
Responding to the Challenges of artificial intelligence
The challenges that artificial intelligence pose to legal ethics, while significant, can
be addressed — and should be addressed, so lawyers can take advantage of the
powerful tools driven by AI.
Education and Training
Part of the lawyer‘s duty of competence involves keeping abreast of
changes in law and in legal practice – and these changes, in 2018, inevitably
involve technology. Large numbers of lawyers don‘t take this duty to keep up with
technology seriously enough, according to David Curle of Thomson Reuters. ―It‘s
not just AI-based technology but even more mundane things like practice
management platforms, and other tools that make it easier and more efficient to
practice law.
The ethical duty of competence requires being appropriately up to speed on
technology,ǁ says Chris Mammen of Hogan Lovells. ―So AI is not something you
can stick your head in the sand over, just as you could not try to conduct a
document review in a major litigation entirely in paper. Lawyers must therefore
have a general understanding of technology and artificial intelligence. And they
must also understand the general operation of the specific AI tools that they use in
their own practices.
We need to have some understanding of what is going into an AI tool and
what‘s coming out of it,ǁ according to ethics lawyer Megan Zavieh, who represents

lawyers facing disciplinary charges. Just as lawyers can‘t prove they satisfied their
ethical duties simply by hiring an outside consultant, they similarly can‘t establish
ethical compliance simply by using an AI tool.
At the same time, lawyers are not programmers – and the ethical rules
recognize this, as David Curle notes: ―The current rules of professional
responsibility are general enough to cover the situation. They suggest two things:
that lawyers must understand enough about a new technology to see the risks,
and that lawyers must understand enough to see the benefits.
What this means in practice is that lawyers need to find trusted providers of
AI-based solutions, and they need to pose smart questions to the providers whose
AI tools they are considering using. Lawyers need to understand, at a basic level,
how the solutions work and how the solutions were developed.
Malaysia‘s Chief Justice Tan Sri Richard Malanjum extolled the virtues of AI
during the opening of Malaysia‘s Legal Year 2019 in January when he said judges
in Malaysia will soon introduce AI to help decide on punishments for convicted
criminals.
Malanjum revealed that the government of Malaysia was exploring a data-
driven feature called ―data sentencingǁ which helps judges achieve consistency
when sentencing different offenders for the same crime.
Some states in the United States (US) already use such programs. One
such program called COMPAS is a risk assessment algorithm which uses various
data to create an assessment score for recidivism which judges may consider
during sentencing.
Malanjum‘s counterpart in Singapore, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon
noted that AI, data analytics and quantum computing have started to make

machine-assisted court adjudication a reality but warned that it raised several
issues.
… the use of AI within a justice system gives rise to a unique set of ethical
concerns, including those relating to credibility, transparency and accountability,
he said during his speech at the opening of Singapore‘s Legal Year 2019 in
January.
For instance, recent studies have raised issues about bias in AI decision-
making, and this has contributed to a spirited debate over the involvement of AI in
the making of judicial decisions. Robust and rigorous discussions must be had
about the proper use of such systems, and the way in which the undoubted
potential of AI can be harnessed while its concomitant risks are managed. Despite
these concerns, Singaporean law firms have been early adopters of AI.
In September 2017, Singapore law firm, WongPartnership became the first
in the country to adopt artificial AI, using it to enhance its due diligence processes
for Merger & Acquisition (M&A) transactions as part of the firm‘s strategy to
leverage on technology.
The firm teamed up with Luminance, a London-based company with
customers in five continents and offers software which has been trained by legal
experts and mathematicians from Cambridge University.
Using advanced machine learning techniques to automatically sort, cluster
and classify data, Luminance‘s AI can pinpoint even subtle differences between
contracts so that hidden risks can be uncovered early on in a transaction, stated
WongPartnership on its website. The platform‘s ability to detect patterns across
large volumes of contracts ensures that lawyers can focus their review on key
documents from the outset.
Technology is changing the way law is practiced and as such technological
innovation must be a cornerstone of our firm‘s future growth,ǁ said Ng Wai King,

Managing Partner at WongPartnership in a press release on the company‘s
website.
Last May, Thai firm Weerawong, Chinnavat & Partners became the first law
firm in the country to use AI, and a month later, Indonesia‘s UMBRA became the
country‘s pioneering law firm to use the technology. Both opted for Luminance‘s
services.
A case in point
In February 2018, AI contract review platform LawGeex beat 20 US-trained
top corporate lawyers at identifying risks in Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs),
one of the most common legal agreements used in business.
The highest performing lawyer in the study achieved 94 percent accuracy –
matching the AI – while the lowest performing lawyer achieved an average
accuracy of 67 percent. More tellingly, the challenge took the LawGeex AI 26
seconds to complete, compared to an average of 92 minutes for the lawyers. The
longest time taken by a lawyer to complete the test was 156 minutes and the
shortest time was 51 minutes.
There are concerns that AI could replace legal professionals, but the more
realistic outcome is that it will complement the global legal services market which
employed 6.9 million legal professionals in 2017 and was worth about US$633
billion according to business information publisher, MarketLine.
Although some jobs which require manual data entry or scanning of
documents may be replaced by AI, there is no substitute for a lawyer‘s experience
and professional expertise.

III.Advantages
Artificial Intelligence is a product of computer science which aims to create
intelligent technology that can work and react like humans. According to Russell &
Norvig (2009), the term ―artificial intelligenceǁ is often used to describe machines
that mimic cognitive functions that humans associate with the human mind, such
as learning and problem solving. Some of the most known Artificial intelligence are
the Deep Blue, a computer that defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasprov,
and AlphaGo, an intelligent system that beat the Go champion, Lee Sedol.
Due to said successes and others more, many companies worldwide have
decided to enhance and adopt such system due to mass advantages it brings not
only to the efficiency of their services, but also because it lessens their
expenditures. Scott Robinson, a SharePoint and business intelligence expert, have
said ―Certainly AI is proving to be an invaluable tool, and intelligent workflow is
going to be the labour-saving norm within just a few yearsǁ, although he did admit
that even though AI can replicate intelligent behaviour, it cannot so to intelligent
thought. Robinson admitted ―An office worker knows how other human beings
think and behave, so she can anticipate delays or opportunities. There are implicit
tasks in all areas of business that are undocumented but natural and deeply
ingrained. AI can‘t get anywhere near those implicit tasks and passive knowledge.ǁ
But even with such weakness, it cannot be denied that truly, artificial intelligence
have change the competition in the business and service industry through its edge
in efficiency and potential.
Advantages in Business and Services
According to a research done by the McKinsey Global Insitute, companies with
advanced digital capabilities in their workforce and operations have improved their
revenue margins three times faster than their competitors. Furthermore, in the

aspect of public service, Philippines have already started embracing the changes
brought by digitization, as evident in the creation of Department of Information and
Communications Technology last 2016. The DICT have been tasked in planning,
developing, and promoting the national ICT development agenda, as mandated by
Republic Act No, 10844.
It is constantly said through advertisements, and is most obvious at today‘s
age that the core purpose of Artificial Intelligence is to lessen the burdens of
humans, and to make our lives easier. Hence, it is made to be able to handle
multiple tasks at the same time. Therefore, a company can save labour costs and
operation expresses if it uses a single AI to accomplish three different jobs, instead
of employing three people to do the job.
Furthermore, because an AI acts according to its input data, it can maximize
its abilities, leading to minimal errors, compared to humans who work and act
depending on their circumstances and emotions. Therefore, though AI, companies
can achieve higher efficiency in their services, and higher satisfaction rate to their
customers. Moreover, AIs continues to improve through the years, making it more
capable in responding, working, and serving its purpose.
Advantages in the Legal Profession
Artificial Intelligence has not only affected the business industry, but also the
legal profession. It had provided an efficient medium of legal information to the law
practitioners and students. It had opened a massive database which is deemed as
important for legal research and legal studies. It made laws and court decisions
accessible to both the public and the bar. And all of these perks resulted in a more
efficient legal industry and improved the communication between those who
defend the law and those who need it.

One of the most time-consuming jobs of a law student is to read and analyze
cases, but because of its proven help in understanding legal concepts, it is still
practiced in today‘s legal education. Before the digital age has emerged in the legal
field, students would have to personally visit the Courts to attain its Decisions, and
be updated to the principles being established day by day, regardless of whether
of how far they are. Although this is effective, it is not efficient. But because of
artificial intelligence, cases have been accessible not only to the students, but also
to the public. It is both time-saving and cost-efficient.
Also, through AI, predictive-coding and technology-assisted review has
become possible. Charles Yablon and Nick Landsman-Roos defined predictive
coding as the general name for a class of computer-based document-review
techniques that aim to automatically distinguish between relevant or irrelevant
litigation-discovery documents. Hence, lawyers can easily separate the relevant
information from those that are not without too much hassle. And it can also review
the documents to detect mistakes in spelling or inconsistencies in the documents
which can help in eradicating misinformation or technical errors.
Through AI, people are not only open to their local jurisprudence and
principles, but also to those of international. This helps in comparing the former
from the latter and vice versa; it also helps in verifying meanings of legal phrases,
and applicability of international principles.
Furthermore, it helps in legal research. It helps legal researchers conserve the
time they put in every topic given to them. Because of the continuous increase of
cases, and changes in decisions, legal researchers would not be able to thoroughly
scan every document available in a certain topic, but through the help of AI, it can
easily search through the files and identify the potentially relevant data the
researchers needed.

Also, Artificial Intelligence helps lawyers to reach clients or potential clients no
matter their distance from each other. Due to the state of our economy, some of
our countrymen cannot afford consultation to lawyers, and unfortunately, most of
those that cannot afford it are those that badly needed it. Aside from this, it is also
evident that the country has more people who need the law than those that
practices the law. But because of technology, lawyers can now save time in
researching, and focus more on reaching to those who need their services without
actually going to their location. It saves the time and the money of both parties.
In conclusion, Artificial Intelligence, although it is still limited and has
disadvantages, brings convenience to the lives of many, especially in the business
industry and the legal field. It helps in enlarging the scope of communication;
eradicate errors; making information more accessible; and build a less-stress life.
IV. Conclusion: Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence
As per the essence reflected under Legal Technique, law is but a series of
algorithms, codified instructions but not limited to proscribing ―do‘s and don‘ts and
―if‘s and then‘s. Wherein we can easily relate the word, “computer programming”
with it. However, the legal system is much more complex. The latter is not as up-
front as coding considering the intricate state of justice today.
The biggest limitation of artificial intelligence is it‘s only as smart as the data sets
served. AI‘s main limitation is that it learns from given data. There is no other way
that knowledge can be integrated, unlike human learning. This means that any
inaccuracies in the data will be reflected in the results.
Lawyers have the burden to process complex series of facts and conditions,
consider appropriate legal rights and obligations and provide well-structured
opinions and guidance on the best course of action based on all of that information.
One of the most sought characteristics of a lawyer is to have the ability to

understand the background of proceedings, general familiarity of how the world
works and comprehension of the law and its application. The work of lawyers is
extremely multifaceted.
Through artificial intelligence, it is possible to imitate some of the works that
a human lawyer normally does, but to completely replicate the latter means to
come up with a process that can create flexible ideas and outcome while also
providing a conclusion based from a set of legal information and an ―experience
databaseǁ. It is important to note that, the legal profession is not limited to
algorithms, analogy, deduction, and others of the same kind but rather it also
relates to the application of the overall information and experiences as human
lawyers. To render legal advice, as lawyers know, can be an extremely complex
task. Hence, it will be a very difficult task to replicate this with computers using
Artificial Intelligence. The law profession involves a lot of spontaneous sorting out
of irrelevant clatters and concentrating in on the signal. On the other hand,
computers are still limited to perform these difficult tasks.
There is no certainty as to whether Artificial Intelligence may mimic the
capacity of human lawyers or not in the long run. As years go by, it is not impossible
not to expect more improvements in the field of technology, hence the biggest
question to ask is not if Artificial intelligence can replace lawyers, but rather, if it
can be utilized as huge contributors to lawyers‘ efficient finishing of the latter‘s
tasks. AI still has significant underperformances. Artificial Intelligence is only as
effective as the algorithm and data behind it. Both its strength and weakness is that
it does exactly what it is programmed to do. There is still a need to program the AI
system at the beginning and supervision and review by humans of the results
produced. Failure to do so can result to negligence claims.

As per the case of J-M Manufacturing Co. v. McDermott Will & Emery, a law
firm was litigated for failing to effectively supervise, a discovery vendor that utilized
search term and keyword filters to filter privileged documents.
According to a complaint J-M filed in a state court in Los Angeles,
McDermott produced too much, all because it did not thoroughly review
the work of contract attorneys at e-discovery vendor Stratify Inc. J-M
claims that 3,900 privileged documents were handed over to the federal
government.
The case serves as a reminder to not put complete faith in the AI systems
utilized. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence lacks human reasoning to fully provide a
sound/rational result lacks personal experience, which will help a person to apply
intuitive response to existing situations. Through these things, a human lawyer is
equipped to evaluate merits and probability of triumph.
Additionally, machine in terms of translation, is more rigid and not fluent
when compared to human translations, the accuracy and suitability of translation
is more visible as to that of human translation.
Humans built the legal system in general, thus it must be noted that reliance
on Artificial Intelligence negates the positive and accurate application of the laws.
In the present, AI is a great tool that makes the work of lawyers more efficient, but
the society should be reminded that it should not be the chief basis for decision-
making with regard to the limitations of AI.
It has been mentioned in this paper that the use of Artificial Intelligence led
to more reliable and efficient outputs. Yet, there are still gaps that are to be
addressed to consider it on an equal footing as human lawyering. Some of which
are: (1) It is costly, (2) It cannot replicate humans, (3) It needs humans to operate,
(4) It lowers employment rate.

First, feeding of information to AI machines increases costs. Artificial
intelligence requires huge costs, as they are very complicated machines. Their
repair and maintenance are costly as well. They have software programs, which
need frequent upgrade to cater to the needs of the dynamic environment and the
need for the machines to be smoother and better for it not to be left out by the latest
information and updates. Most importantly, in case of severe breakdowns, the
procedure to recover misplaced codes and restoring the system might require huge
time and cost.
In general, machines lack emotions and moral value. Machines do not have
any emotions and moral values. Care or concerns are not present in the machine
intelligence dictionary. There is no human touch in the field of artificial intelligence.
They fail to distinguish between a hardworking individual and an inefficient
individual. They are no match to the power of rational thinking that the human brain
has or even the uniqueness of the human mind. Human beings are highly sensitive
and emotional individuals. Most importantly, their thoughts are guided by their
feelings, through which machines are lacking.
They are limited by the programming imposed upon them and they cannot
be the sole judges for deciding whether something is right or wrong. AI machines
cannot improve without the presence of humans. New codes and new training
process are needed for the improvement. Their ability is limited and bound by
which they are created. They either perform
erroneously or collapse in such situations. Machines are unable to alter their
responses to changing environments.
The automation process also reduces the percentage of employed manual
labor engaged in the law industry. AI can be a great tool for efficiency and
substitute for human lawyers but its limitations just prove otherwise.
Unemployment is a socially detrimental occurrence. Replacement of humans with

machines can lead to large-scale unemployment. Specifically, machines as
substitutes for human lawyers largely degrade the high morality of lawyers and the
profession. Using robots and other AI related machines constitute to high utilization
of non-human brain, which negates the main essence of the practice of law, which
requires good and regular standing and good moral character, which a robot
definitely lacks. Artificial intelligence augments and empowers human intelligence.
But its limitations and disadvantages uphold otherwise.

Reference:
Sahota, N. (2019, February 10). Will A.I. Put Lawyers Out Of Business? Retrieved
from https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/02/09/will-a-i-put-lawyers-
out-of-business/#437e684a31f0
Can artificial intelligence lie, if it's served inaccurate data sets? (2018, February
04). Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/business/china-
business/article/2131903/biggest-limitation-artificial-intelligence-its-only-smart
AI in Law: Definition, Current Limitations and Future Potential. (2017, March 12).
Retrieved from https://legal-tech-blog.de/ai-in-law-definition-current-limitations-
and-future-potential
Pros and Pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence in IP and the Broader Legal Profession.
(n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landsli
de/2018-19/january-february/pros-pitfalls-artificial-intelligence-ip-broader-legal-
profession/
Malcolm, & Here, P. E. (2019, October 17). The Limitation of Artificial Intelligence
in the Legal Industry. Retrieved from
https://www.tech4law.co.za/business/artificial-intelligence/the-limitation-of-
artificial-intelligence-in-the-legal-industry/
Reddy, K., By, & Reddy, K. (2020, May 12). Advantages and Disadvantages of
Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from https://content.wisestep.com/advantages-
disadvantages-artificial-intelligence/

Artificial Intelligence in The Legal Profession: San Miguel, Manila

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Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Profession

ourselves. Progress in making stone weapon up to the creation of armaments and

through technologies and artificial intelligence.

developments and changes to happen. It is through technology that we have

of skill, that will be the basis of labor.

is becoming advance because of the advancement in technologies in developed

Bumanglag // Castillo // Cinco // De Guzman // Panes

big program developers or multinational corporations are competing for innovation

such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

These Multinational Corporations are competing for dominance in the

developments that is happening today with the technologies and artificial

one with the technology and artificial intelligence itself.

Bumanglag // Castillo // Cinco // De Guzman // Panes

jobs are still available to humans in the robot-dominated workforce.

be much harder in Artificial Intelligence kind of economy because innovation will

humans do can be done by a robot. Artificial intelligence can dominate us, it is a

Bumanglag // Castillo // Cinco // De Guzman // Panes

History of Artificial Intelligence

As the wide world revolves, and the Artificial Intelligence technology

increasingly becoming integrated in everyday lives of every human, it is more

becoming leading topic of random discussion in the world. Meanwhile,

the negative impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI)” he 1 provides that AI is

Moreover, to further discuss the above topic, it is proper to introduce first

Intelligence” of Buchanan (2019) the beginnings of artificial intelligence are traced

to ―philosophy, fiction, and imagination.ǁ Further, Philosophers have also floated

the possibility of intelligent machines as a literary device to help us define what it

of logic to settle disputes.

As example of mechanical reasoning devices, chess was cited on the

above above magazine that is quite obviously an enterprise that requires

―thoughtǁ. Thus, it is not indeed too surprising, then, that chess-playing

Bumanglag // Castillo // Cinco // De Guzman // Panes

machines of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most notably ―the

Turk,ǁ were exhibited as an ―intelligent machinesǁ and even fooled some

identifying machines that had intelligence indistinguishable from humans. The

proposed test consist of ―text-only conversations between two participants.

Further, he also argued that if a human participant is unable to tell the

difference between communicating with a human versus a machine then that

machine can be thought of as intelligent.

Thus, there are some arguments about replacing human by an Artificial

Intelligence, there are discussion that AI could replace human in different

election in Russia, and did receive ―couple thousand votes. Further, to be

placed third with also a couple thousand votes. Alongside

―Aliceǁ and ―Michihito Matsudaǁ is ―Sam, a machine hailing from New

called the first virtual politician in the world. (Selimi, 2019)

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II. Lawyering in the Philippines

Technology is often blamed for destroying traditional working-class jobs in

who are at risk.

The legal profession — tradition-bound and labor-heavy — is on the cusp of a

transformation in which artificial-intelligence platforms dramatically affect how legal

work gets done.

diligence before corporate acquisitions.

responsibility of flesh-and-blood attorneys.

Increasing automation of the legal industry promises to increase efficiency and

becomes responsible for tasks currently performed by humans.

Advocates of AI, however, argue there could actually be an increase in the

more affordable to greater numbers of people.

of LawGeex, a leading AI-powered platform for legal contract review.

ago, like travel,ǁ he said.

Replacing drudge work

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Bechor‘s transition from lawyer to AI advocate came as a result of his own