5 Things to Ask Before Hiring a Robo-Lawyer: Part 4

Whether good or bad, the law is used by some to obtain or retain advantages over others, like education, money and politics. Over short and medium time frames, access to AI—and access to better AI—will likely skew toward those who can afford to supplement quality human legal advice for their separate advantage. So, until AI can make quality legal services equally available to all, we human lawyers have a continuing social obligation to supplement pro bono efforts with access to legal technologies used by our paying clients. Remember “the future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed.” (William Gibson, “Neuromancer,” ACE 1984.)

Indifferent to motivations, our individual legal needs result in judicial decisions and laws that feed a necessary but obscured dialectic process, akin to the work of Hari Seldon. (Isaac J. Asimov, “Foundation,” Gnome Press 1951.) We want our laws to be, or at least be perceived as final and immutable. But, we also want our laws to evolve so that they fit better with our ever-growing understanding of our morals, and our social, technical and business needs. By working meticulously and conscientiously to resolve our separate legal needs, by making sense of and then applying what appears to others as legal minutiae, lawyers and judges help to promote the process, corral affluent or disruptive outliers, and at the same time obscure the forest by focusing on the seeds.