In an interview with iTnews, Philip Scorgie, who joined Allens last month from Chicago-based Mayer Brown, said that he expects large Australian law firms to begin adopting cloud-based cognitive computing systems within the next year.

Assisting, not replacing, humans

But he believes predictions that ‘robot lawyers’ will replace humans are overstated. He instead views cognitive computing as augmenting, rather than replacing, human capabilities, for example by assisting lawyers to handle large data volumes to produce structured documents.

Data sovereignty concerns

The CIO also said that nervousness around the access foreign governments might have to firms' sensitive client data has meant the legal sector has been hesitant to adopt cloud technologies, particularly in Australia and Europe. But he added that doing so carried a risk that in-house legal teams would do so and handle more work themselves.