INTRODUCTION
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important. It controls smartphones, traffic lights, and sales platforms, enables faster production in factories, and allows automatic turning on and off of lights at home.
AI offers many new opportunities, but it also brings various risks. Regarding the application of artificial intelligence, many questions arise that we have yet to answer, and we don’t know when we will have them.
- WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was first used by American computer scientist John McCarthy in 1955 and refers to the creation of intelligence through computer programming.
There isn’t a single, unified definition of artificial intelligence, but European Union legislation defines an AI system as a machine system designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy. After being introduced, it can exhibit adaptability and, for explicit or implicit goals, deduce how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments from the input it receives.
Artificial intelligence refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and understanding natural language. AI is a rapidly evolving field with the potential to transform many industries and aspects of everyday life.
- WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DOES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OFFER IN THE APPLICATION OF LAW – LEGAL TECH?
Legal Tech refers to various applications of AI in the field of law. This can mean either that AI automatically applies the law or assists in legal case assessments.
The automatic application of the law is an extremely sensitive area. The possibility (which has been discussed rather abstractly so far) of a computer making judicial decisions is likely to remain prohibited in most legal systems.
Although the question of whether a judge must be human has not been raised until recently, it is now widely accepted that this is the case in both criminal and civil court proceedings. The reason is the previously dominant assumption that only a human could understand the emotional significance of a case and thus make a just decision. Therefore, we cannot expect judicial decisions through AI in the near future. On the other hand, AI support in finding justice is becoming increasingly common.
It is expected that in the next few years, Legal Tech will significantly change the way lawyers perform their jobs. This applies to all areas of law, from criminal to corporate law, contract review and processing, legal chatbots, legal due diligence, and everything else.
One good example of Legal Tech application is the Mexican Federal Court of Justice, which has established a system using information technology through online trials. Similarly, the American platform Wevorce.com offers online divorce services with significantly lower legal costs. By registering on the platform, users receive all the necessary forms, advice, and even go through the mediation process. Additionally, platforms like IPNexus provide intellectual property protection in a fully automated way, with software that, based on predefined algorithms, determines the type of intellectual property and conducts the rights protection process.
The direction in which Legal Tech will continue to develop will undoubtedly raise new questions regarding cybersecurity risks, liability for provided services, data privacy, regulation, and the need to create a controlled and structured environment that allows all the advantages of Legal Tech to be fully utilized. This is why the almost parallel development of regulatory technology (RegTech) is necessary, as the combination of regulation and technology should ensure its full implementation, regulatory monitoring, and compliance.
CONCLUSION
Unlike FinTech, which, aside from regulatory challenges, has no other ethical dilemmas, Legal Tech raises certain concerns and challenges the traditional way of providing legal services, primarily because technology is not ethically determined but is shaped by human interaction with it. Therefore, we should extract the best from this technology, automate repetitive tasks, and facilitate the access of technology to the judiciary, as Legal Tech will, to a greater or lesser extent, change the paradigm of legal practice and redefine the roles of lawyers and attorneys. Legal Tech is something that the legal profession should not shy away from because, as long as the focus remains on the client, all these innovations should be used to improve services in terms of efficiency and speed. The legal profession has faced numerous challenges before, and this is precisely one that should be embraced to its advantage because, although it may seem otherwise at first, Legal Tech will not distance us from clients but rather bring us closer, just a click away.
Author: Aleksandar Sajic
Email: [email protected]
