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Posts: 33243
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12 years ago
Lawyers Object As Computer Program Does Job Better
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Robots won't be replacing lawyers anytime soon, but computer programs are already acting like overachieving interns.
First doctors, now lawyers. I can hear them now: “I didn’t go through all those years of school just to be replaced by a computer.”
As Watson bones up on his medical knowledge in hopes of giving doctors a helping hand, lawyers are becoming increasingly antsy over computer programs that are finding their way into the law firms–and doing something lawyers do but faster, better, and cheaper.
The part the computers are hijacking is a step early in the process of two parties suing each other. Called “discovery,” each side asks the other to produce information relevant to the case. As you can imagine this is a very labor-intensive and costly endeavor. Back in the day when information was entirely in the form of documents, it wasn’t uncommon for companies to have warehouses filled with boxes containing files. Lawyers and paralegals would scour one pile after another, hour after hour, day after day, looking for something that might be important. Today, the vast majority of a company’s information is stored electronically. Gone are the days of peering over stacks of paper, but the electronic data jungle is formidable in its own right. Pertinent information can be stored in a multitude of formats. Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PDF files are common forms of documentation. But relevant information can also be stored as video or audio media, and of course the juicy format that always seems to nail the big guys: email. “E-discovery” became a part of the litigation vernacular to describe this new electronic discovery process. It’s vastly superior to a paper search, but e-discovery still requires digging through an enormous amount of material.
Given the fact that the vast majority of a company’s information is electronic, it was only a matter of time before e-discovery software was developed. It comes in two main flavors. A ‘linguistic’ approach looks for specific words or associated words or phrases. A filter for “baseball” will pull out documents containing “bat” or “hotdog.” More sophisticated software takes a ‘sociological’ approach by adding to the linguistic analysis an inferential element. Like a detective, the software uses seemingly unrelated information such as who talks to whom, and when, where and how they talked to deduce a conclusion.
Because “relevant information” often means illegal activity, ads for e-discovery software companies often sound more like ads for security companies. Silicon Valley’s Cataphora has developed software that takes an advanced sociological approach: it detects changes in a person’s behavior. Any “deviations from normality…is where any bad acts will always be found.”
The technology first models the “normal behavior” of an organization. Their normal behavior is derived from the aggregate of electronic information stored in the computer systems and networks of the company (I guess it’s a safe assumption that the majority of the company is not in on the bad behavior). To determine the baseline communication patterns they mine documents, emails, phone logs, calendars, and even keycard entry logs. This data is then used to characterize people’s behavior: their communications but also their document flow and meetings schedule, both inside and outside the company. Once they’ve got the baseline they can spot anomalous behavior. For example, in the image to the left normal behavior–based either on the individual’s past patterns or those of workers who have similar duties–is represented by blue lines connecting him with coworkers within the company (grey network) or his friends and family outside the company (green). But when he suddenly begins to interact significantly with competitors (red) the “anomalous behavior” flag goes up.
It can also detect “call me” moments–times when the employee suspiciously switches to another type of communication as if he doesn’t want to leave an electronic trail. Most impressively, I think, is Cataphora’s ability to detect when the tone of the employee has changed in an email. It tracks moments of “loud talking”–statements of increased emphasis that might indicate that the sender is stressed. It can also detect subtler changes in tone, as when the writer goes from informal to formal. Like the troopers’ eye that’s drawn to the car driving the speed limit–you got guilty written all over your subject-verb agreement.
A famous case of insider trading gone unnoticed is that of Jérôme Keviel. The stock broker was caught in 2008 for illegal trading that ended up costing the French bank Société Générale $7 billion. He was able to get away with the trades because his behavior did not violate the bank’s own compliance monitoring system. His behavior, however, was abnormal. Among the anomalies Cataphora claims they would have picked up on are routinely overriding chain of command (going to his second-level manager unusually often) and working excessively with just one broker. By themselves these behaviors wouldn’t attract much attention as they don’t break with company compliance. But in the context of normal behavior, they would have gotten Keviel’s butt caught. It’s a signal-to-noise extraction that a room full of humans probably aren’t going to get wise to.
The same data can be sifted for signs of sexual harassment, employee discrimination, or unfair hiring practices. And not to be limited to the identification of bad apples, the sort of artificial intelligence behind e-discovery can be used to pluck out hard to find diamonds in the rough such as those who produce valuable content that is reused by members of the company network.
E-discovery is just the latest technology to threaten the workforce by automating tasks historically performed by humans. Electronic design automation software took over the design of printed circuit boards and integrated circuits previously done by hand. Automation software is also lightening the workload for loan and mortgage officers and tax accountants. Even scientific investigation is being automated. Computers can scan the genome, come up with their own hypotheses as to what particular genes might do, and then perform experiments to test those hypotheses. This will, of course, inevitably lead to a dispute between the computer and the gene sequencer as to who should be first-author.
Even without e-discovery siphoning away their billable hours lawyers have had it rough in recent years. Like many industries, the recent recession has hit law hard, prompting law firms to lay off thousands of associates, de-equitize partners, slash budgets, and arrest hiring. What the recession didn’t do was slow down law graduates. The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2005 90.6 percent of summer law interns were offered full-time jobs upon graduating. In 2009 that number dropped to 69.3 percent. In fact, today’s law graduates are entering the worst job market in 15 years. With its ability to cut law office staff, isn’t it understandable that the rise of e-discovery–a leading analyst firm declared e-discovery market to be entering a high growth phase–is seen as a threat to new graduates and law firms alike?
I object, your honor.
Maybe I don’t know enough about the field, but it seems to me that increasing efficiency is generally a good thing. I understand that times are so tough right now that lawyers, to keep hours, are now doing tasks typically handed off to paralegals, such as discovery. And the last thing they need is for computer programs to muscle in on the already limited opportunities. But if we take a step back and acknowledge that legal fees, in general, are really freakin‘ high and that the average person, even before the Great Recession, can’t afford a lawyer, then maybe e-discovery becomes an opportunity instead of a threat. In a 1978 a high-profile antitrust case between the Justice Department and CBS the discovery phase included sifting through six million documents. It took a small army of lawyers and paralegals months to get through the documents. And it cost $2.2 million (remember, that’s 1978 dollars). Compare that to a case earlier this year in which e-discovery software was used. Blackstone Discovery’s computers went through 1.5 million documents. They completed the task in a fraction of the time and the cost was a very affordable $100,000. If law firms transferred those savings–savings of both money and time–to clients they would undoubtedly get more clients.
More clients = more revenue = more hires.
I may be missing something here, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. Don’t fight the technology, find a way to use it to your advantage. From the farms, to the clinic, and now law offices, technology is going to continue to upgrade the workplace. We just need to make sure we keep pace by upgrading the humans in the workplace too.[/font]
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