Ex Machina: Technological Disruption and the Future of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Writing

Abstract

Technology is disrupting the practice of law and revolutionizing how lawyers work.  This revolution is made more powerful because it is increasingly coupled with a rigorous and scientific approach to the law.  In some ways, law is looking more like a Silicon Valley startup and less like the oak-paneled law firms of the last 200 years.  As law, technology, and science merge, the implications for the profession are wide-sweeping.  This article explores persuasive legal writing, offering new thoughts on what the future will hold.  Specifically, this article pilots a method for applying technology and science to measure, analyze and improve persuasive legal writing, offering it as a proof of concept that anchors the article’s broader, and perhaps more controversial assertion.  Namely, more powerful and refined persuasive legal writing software tools, fueled by artificial intelligence, should and will disrupt and reshape significant portions of the legal space, including how legal writing is taught and how it is produced. The effect will be to view legal writing as more science, and less art. The next set of luminaries won’t rely on anecdote or intuition to teach or create legal writing; they will rely on software and data.