Abstract:

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence presents many opportunities to improve law and society. At the same time, AI presents risks and potential harms. These opportunities and challenges can be separated into two categories. First, the law and regulations that apply to technology. Second, the use of technology to improve legal-services delivery and justice systems. Additionally, each category offers opportunities to use technology to promote the rule of law.

The deployment of AI raises many interesting questions about the application of existing law and regulation. AI also raises questions about the need for new law and regulation, including to ensure fairness, accountability, and transparency. AI also creates the possibility of implementing basic rules of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law into innovation processes and AI systems by design and default. The challenge is to use law and regulation to guide the deployment of AI toward societal improvements, without slowing innovation.

Technology has also shown the potential to revolutionize legal-services delivery, thus improving access to law and legal services for everyone. In the U.S., estimates are that more than 80% of the impoverished and more than 50% of the middle class lack access to legal services. Even some legal needs of businesses, large and small, go unmet. Computational technologies hold great promise for automating the delivery of various legal services across this spectrum. For basic legal needs, in the future smartphones could provide all users with an inventory of their legal rights and obligations, as well as solutions to common legal problems.

Innovation in legal-services delivery has been slow, however, including because regulations prohibit lawyers from sharing fees with anyone who is not a lawyer. Consequently, lawyers and technologists rarely collaborate on legal-services delivery projects. But this is changing. An increasing number of lawyers are working with allied professionals to improve processes, better manage projects, become data-driven, and leverage technology to improve legal services. Basic technologies and AI are slowly making their way into the legal industry, from legal aid and courts to large law firms and corporate legal departments.

If we are to realize the potential for AI to improve society, we must have law, regulation, and ethical principles in mind at every stage, from problem definition, design, and data collection to training, deployment, and maintenance of systems. To achieve this, technologists and lawyers must collaborate and share a common vocabulary. Lawyers must learn about technology, and technologists must learn about law. Multidisciplinary teams with a shared commitment to law, regulation, and ethics can proactively address the challenges AI presents today, and advance our collaborative problem-solving capabilities to address tomorrow's challenges and create a better future.

Bio:

Daniel W. Linna Jr. is a Visiting Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Dan is also an affiliated faculty member at CodeX - The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.

Dan's teaching and research focus on innovation and technology, including computational law, artificial intelligence, data analytics, leadership, operations, and innovation frameworks. At Northwestern, Dan has taught Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning, Law of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Assessing Artificial Intelligence and Computational Technologies, and the Innovation Lab, an interdisciplinary class with computer science faculty and students.

Dan joined Northwestern from Michigan State University College of Law, where he was a Professor of Law in Residence and the founder and Director of LegalRnD - The Center for Legal Services Innovation. At Michigan State, Dan taught Quantitative Analysis for Lawyers, Litigation {Data, Theory, Practice, & Process}, Entrepreneurial Lawyering, and Lawyer Ethics and Regulation in a Technology-Driven World. Dan has also been an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School, where he has taught Negotiation and Legal Technology & Innovation: Legal-Service Delivery in the 21st Century.