The study ‘Can Robots Be Lawyers?’ was conducted by University of North Carolina law professor Dana Remus and MIT labour economist Frank Levy. After analysing law firm billing data for the year 2014 provided by an analytics company, the researchers estimated that lawyer employment would drop slightly more than 13 per cent if automation is applied to law practice.

‘Predictions … premature’

‘Certainly, automation is having a significant impact on the labour market for lawyers and that impact will increase over time,’ the study says, ‘but predictions of imminent and widespread displacement of lawyers are premature. A careful look at existing and emerging technologies reveals that it is only relatively structured and repetitive tasks that can currently be automated. These tasks represent a relatively modest percentage of lawyers’ billable hours.’ Source: ABA Journal