How are law firms changing to meet the challenges posed by tech?

New technological advances bring both threats and opportunities to the legal sector, and have led to a constant pressure to innovate either internally or find the right solution externally. Law firms, too, are responding to the need for innovation by implementing new procedures and introducing various LegalTech Tools to make the work of lawyers more streamlined and efficient, albeit not without any hesitation. While most lawyers and law firms recognise the need to innovate and digitally transform, however, the process of transformation remains very slow in the legal sector in certain regards. 

In this episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored the tech-driven transformation of law firms and the role of LegalTech within this context with Jeroen Plink, former CEO at Clifford Chance Applied Solutions and founder at Plink Insights. 

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To what extent can directors be held liable for the use of AI on the board?

Currently, directors increasingly make use of AI-tools to assist in their decision-making tasks. The fact that these AI tools are used during board meetings and when casting a vote on the business direction is rather shocking and has caused quite some upheaval within a range of fields, including the field of corporate law. The implications that their emergence has for the legal framework regulating corporations and corporate conduct have not been experienced before and have raised uncertainties with regard to the extent to which this development falls within the scope of and complies with contemporary corporate law, especially when considering possible attribution of liability when something goes wrong.

In this episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored the interaction between Artificial Intelligence, directors and liability in the Australian and UK context with Samar Ashour, Solicitor admitted at the Supreme Court of NSW, Australia.

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How is machine learning used within the legal domain to predict court decisions, and what concerns does this raise?

The idea of automation and semi-automation of the legal domain is not new at all. Legal technology is rapidly gaining interest, and many law firms and government organisations already use tools to automate, speed up and simplify their work. One of the subjects that the field of AI and Law is fascinated with is making a fair and unbiased decision-making system that would be able to assist judges in their decision-making, or even replace them in courts. While believed to be beneficial in many respects, this inevitably raises a number of concerns that demand attention.

In this episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored the use of machine learning to predict court decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with Masha Medvedeva, a computational linguist and an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at the Centre for Language and Cognition and at the Department of Legal Methods at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

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Does a right to explanation in the context of automated decision-making exist, and, if so, what does it entail?

While some believe that the right to meaningful information as stipulated in the GDPR also indicates the existence of a right to explanation in the context of automated decision-making, including profiling, there is no single, neat statutory provision labeled the ‘right to an explanation’ in the GDPR. Nevertheless, there is much debate in the field on whether such a right indeed indirectly exists, what the legal basis of such right is, and what such right entails. What is this debate all about, where do we currently stand in this debate, and where are we heading?

In this episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored the right to an explanation in the context of automated decisions with Maja Nišević, PhD Candidate and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Researcher at the University of Verona, Italy.

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Is it time to switch up the traditional model of law school and legal education? 

While it is usually tough to make predictions, especially about the future, this is particularly challenging in turbulent environments. In the 21st century, new technological advances that change the way people relate to one another and to the very notion of work, give us pause for renewed and careful speculation about the status of the law and legal industry. In the long term, both the status of the law and the roles that humans have in the legal process will have to be reshaped and redefined by these forces, and therefore they must inform the future of law school and legal education.

In this episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored and discussed the status of law school and legal education in the digital age with Felix Zopf, PhD Candidate, and teaching and research associate at the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law at the Law School of the University of Vienna.

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Are you curious about the impact of automated gender recognition systems?

While it is no surprise that algorithms exacerbate existing biases, such as gender biases, and thereby affect marginalised communities, rapid technological advancements give rise to growing concerns with regard to the discriminatory outcomes and other potentially adverse impacts that gendered algorithms may have for large parts of society.

In this episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored and discussed the legal and broader impact and implications of automated gender recognition systems with Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Assistant Professor at the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University.

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Are you curious about the data protection implications of online price discrimination?

While the practice of price discrimination is not at all new, the introduction of "big data" has given this practice a new and legally questionable twist. Given the fact that online price discrimination is shown to raise concerns from the perspective of social welfare and its distribution, and is met with much opposition by society, a valid question is if existing law can be of help. One field of law that can be turned to for further assistance is that of privacy and data protection.

In the first episode of The Law of Tech Podcast, I explored and discussed the practice of online price discrimination in the light of EU Data Protection Law with Leiden Law School PhD Candidate Kimia Heidary.

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In The Law of Tech Podcast Trailer, podcast host Hadassah Drukarch introduces the podcast and its mission. The Law of Tech Podcast aims to prepare the legal world of tomorrow for the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of law and digital technologies. New episodes are published every month, and are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more!