AI is undergoing a paradigm shift with the rise of models (e.g., BERT, DALL-E, GPT-3) that are trained on broad data at scale and are adaptable to a wide range of downstream tasks. We call these models foundation models to underscore their critically central yet incomplete character. This report provides a thorough account of the opportunities and risks of foundation models, ranging from their capabilities (e.g., language, vision, robotics, reasoning, human interaction) and technical principles(e.g., model architectures, training procedures, data, systems, security, evaluation, theory) to their applications (e.g., law, healthcare, education) and societal impact (e.g., inequity, misuse, economic and environmental impact, legal and ethical considerations). Though foundation models are based on standard deep learning and transfer learning, their scale results in new emergent capabilities,and their effectiveness across so many tasks incentivizes homogenization. Homogenization provides powerful leverage but demands caution, as the defects of the foundation model are inherited by all the adapted models downstream. Despite the impending widespread deployment of foundation models, we currently lack a clear understanding of how they work, when they fail, and what they are even capable of due to their emergent properties. To tackle these questions, we believe much of the critical research on foundation models will require deep interdisciplinary collaboration commensurate with their fundamentally sociotechnical nature.

On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models.

Legal technologies (digital solutions to providing legal services) have turned into the essential element of competition among legal-market stakeholders. This study highlights the competitive superiority of legal services based on the concept of innovative disruptive technologies in comparison to traditional firms. For this purpose, the present study identified several trends in the evolution of the legal tech market (i.e., changing landscapes of legal business, delivery models, legal-market segments, and disruptive technologies); moreover, qualitative content analysis has been conducted to provide sound grounds for cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, cost-benefit analysis makes a comparison of the monetary, social and psychological costs, benefits of legal technologies and traditional firms from clients’ and lawyers’ viewpoints. This has been, in fact, neglected by extant research. Based on these analyses, a new model for legal business has developed to highlight how potential advancements can take place in legal practices. Our findings reveal that legal technologies make legal services more affordable and easily accessible, while helping lawyers to develop innovative solutions and a relaxed working environment. In addition, this study contributes to the literature on service innovation with a focus on how new services and business models have been developed in the legal market as a result of digital technologies. Eventually, this study adds theoretical and practical implications to the research discussing the advent of legal technologies.

Legal Technologies in Action: The Future of the Legal Market in Light of Disruptive Innovations

The legal profession is undergoing fundamental changes; and this is the case not just in established legal markets. Based on a state-of-the-art sketch, this paper identifies and analyzes the latest innovation initiatives and alternative business models in China’s legal profession. It finds that, propelled by market demands and benefiting from technological advancements, the provision of legal services has become highly versatile today, giving rise to various alternative service providers, especially the rapidly rising online legal service portals. Because they are technically not law firms, the exclusivity requirements on lawyer ownership and legal service provision are not applicable to them. In the meantime, the competition for large corporate clients and lucrative business transactions is fierce and will continue to be so, not only within the club of big Chinese corporate law firms, but also between Chinese law firms and international law firms globally. In this course, some leading big corpora...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09695958.2018.1491853

The legal profession of China in a globalized world: Innovations and new challenges

Current state of automated legal advice tools

Over the next decades, advances in technology and new business practices will challenge a traditionally conservative legal profession. With a focus on the Australian legal profession, this article explores the nature of the challenges and, in particular, considers whether the challenges pose a threat of disruptive innovation. The article aims to add to understanding of how Australian law firms are responding to the challenges by drawing on empirical data that examines the drivers and inhibitors of innovation in Australian law firms, the areas where Australian legal firms are innovating, and the outcomes of their innovation. The article concludes that there is limited evidence of incumbent displacement and that, gradually, the profession is rising to the challenges.

Innovation in the Australian legal profession

The legal profession is in the midst of a disruption: a monumental, transformative shift in shape and focus that will change the practice of law forever. Some lament this phenomenon. Some worry that it signals the end of Big Law, and that it will have ripple effects throughout the legal industry. Many assess the impact of these disruptions on the delivery of services to wealthier clients and corporations, who, in many instances, are the only ones able to afford lawyers in the U.S. legal market in the first place. Clayton Christensen has coined the term the "Innovator’s Dilemma" for the phenomenon of business disruption, through which high-end producers of goods and services are "disrupted" by those entering the market on the lower end. Those disruptors are first ignored by incumbents and then those entrants find ways to serve a larger and larger segment of the market, eventually displacing the incumbents. If this theory is to be believed, true change in the market for the provision of legal services will not come from those serving wealthier clients, where many today look for the impacts of disruptive techniques and technologies. Instead, true disruption is likely to come from those serving the "lower end" of the market: the solo practitioners, legal services lawyers, and "low bono" providers of legal services. It is innovation in these corners of the market where pathbreaking disruption will take place, mostly out of necessity. What’s more, it is the low end of the market that is actually quite robust: i.e., there is a desperate need for legal services, just an inability to pay for them. Disruption of the legal services industry has the potential for bringing real benefits to low- and moderate-income consumers of legal services. What this Article attempts to do is identify ways that disruption can occur in the provision of legal services to improve access to justice, particularly for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. While many recent entrants into the market for legal services risk running afoul of charges of unauthorized practice of law, those who are providing free services through the internet appear to be acting in compliance with lawyer rules of professional responsibility. This Article will review both the for-profit and non-profit models of technology-enabled legal assistance and assess the extent to which each may comply, or not comply, with unauthorized practice of law requirements. It will then review current efforts of non-profits to deliver technology-enabled services, and describe one initiative in detail that involved the creation of a web-based application to assist homeowners facing foreclosure in New York State. Given the need in low- and moderate-income communities for affordable legal services, perhaps disruption in this market has its benefits: at a minimum, it offers a way to improve access to justice for communities and individuals underserved by the present — and expensive — modes of delivering legal services in the United States. This article explores those benefits, but also highlights some of the concerns that arise when technology is used to improve access to justice.

Embracing Disruption: How Technological Change in the Delivery of Legal Services Can Improve Access to Justice

I. INTRODUCTION Change has come to the legal profession. Technology has supercharged the ability of lawyers to conduct lightning-fast legal research; engage in e-discovery; bend time and space by communicating with clients, colleagues, and adversaries scattered throughout the world; and draft hundreds if not thousands of documents with a few key strokes. But just as technology has made lawyering easier, it has also made it easier to provide services that look a lot like lawyering. And the provision of legal services is becoming commodified: carried out by lawyers and nonlawyers alike in a way that is far less expensive than the traditional, "bespoke" model of lawyering. In the words of Clayton Christensen, the legal profession is in the midst of a disruption: a monumental, transformative shift in shape and focus that will change the practice of law forever. Some lament this phenomenon. Some worry that it signals the end of big law and that it will have ripple effects throughout the legal industry; that it means there will be fewer lawyers and fewer law schools and that the transformation of lawyering will harm the ability of all lawyers to earn a living--not just those in large, white-shoe firms, but also those practicing in small towns and rural America. Others claim that the new modes of providing legal services--websites, mobile applications, do-it-yourself programs--threaten the consumer, who may receive services at a discounted price, yet those services may be of such low quality that they might end up causing more harm than good. (1) Some, like Richard Susskind, embrace this disruption and believe the changes in the legal profession will mean a different role for lawyers in the future. (2) Many assess the impact of these disruptions on the delivery of services to wealthier clients and corporations, who, in many instances, are the only ones able to afford lawyers in the U.S. legal market in the first place. But if Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" theory of business disruption is to be believed, true change in the market for the provision of legal services will not come from those serving wealthier clients. Instead, disruption in the legal field will come from those serving individuals of lower income who do not require the type of representation that has become the norm in the celebrated halls of the largest, wealthiest law firms. True disruption is likely to come from those serving the "lower end" of the market: the solo practitioners, legal services lawyers, and "low bono" providers of legal services. It is innovation in these corners of the market where pathbreaking disruption will take place, mostly out of necessity. What is more, it is the low-end of the market that is actually quite robust--that is, there is a desperate need for legal services, just an inability to pay for them. If disruption is indeed coming to the legal services market, and few can doubt that it is, technological innovation, one of the main drivers of this disruption, can serve to widen access to justice in communities desperate for legal assistance--low- to moderate-income communities, the working poor, and the middle class. Christensen's theories of disruption, which will be discussed here, posit that disruptive innovation does not start at the high-end of the market, but rather typically enters the low end and filters its way up, changing the way a particular market segment operates. (3) Most who have bemoaned the disruption occurring in the legal market have pointed out that lawyers for wealthier clients are seeing their profits diminish and their clients demanding more efficient, less expensive services. What we hope to do here is identify ways that disruption can occur in the provision of legal services to improve access to justice, particularly for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. If Christensen's theories about disruption are to be believed, it is here where true disruption of the legal services profession will occur. …

Kellan Burton Potts

Papers

Embracing Disruption: How Technological Change in the Delivery of Legal Services Can Improve Access to Justice

Embracing Disruption: How Technological Change in the Delivery of Legal Services Can Improve Access to Justice