律师行业将被颠覆？

律师行业将被颠覆？

律师事务所纷纷投资人工智能领域，传统上由初级律师承担的枯燥工作正在逐渐自动化。法律行业可能即将迎来“优步化”，成为被技术颠覆的下一个目标。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

mundane 平凡的；世界的['mʌndeɪn; mʌn'deɪn]

clause 条款；[计] 子句[klɔːz]

paralegal 律师的专职助手[pærə'liːg(ə)l]

churn 搅拌；搅动[tʃɜːn]

阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。

如果您读完全文用时为： 那么，您的阅读速度相当于 每分钟阅读的英文单词数

4分42秒 母语为英语者的朗读速度 140

2分45秒 母语为英语的中学生的阅读速度 250

1分41秒 母语为英语的大学生的阅读速度 350

0分56秒 母语为英语的速读高手 1000

Legal firms unleash office automatons（564 words）

By Jane Croft

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Linklaters and Pinsent Masons have become the latest law firms to invest in artificial intelligence, as the legal profession tries to automate the mundane tasks that have traditionally been the preserve of junior lawyers.

Linklaters has developed Verifi, a computer program that can sift through 14 UK and European regulatory registers to check client names for banks. The company said it could process thousands of names overnight.

Edward Chan, banking partner at Linklaters, said: “Previously it would have taken a trained junior lawyer an average of 12 minutes to search a single customer name.

“AI is an indispensible tool for coping with the ever-growing amounts of data which lawyers have to handle in running complex matters. Our lawyers are not engineers or data scientists. Good solid legal skills remain what we look for in our lawyers.”

Pinsent Masons has developed a program that reads and analyses clauses in loan agreements. Its TermFrame system also helps guide lawyers through transactions and point them towards the correct precedents at each stage of a process.

Another law firm, Dentons, has set up NextLaw Labs, a virtual company which looks at the application of technology with the law. It has invested in ROSS, an IBM Watson-powered legal adviser app that streamlines legal research, saving lawyers’ time and clients’ money. ROSS is currently being pilot-tested at Dentons and approximately 20 other law firms.

Hodge, Jones & Allen, a law firm, has worked with academics from University College London to create software that assesses the merits of personal injury cases.

Professor Richard Susskind, a technology adviser to the Lord Chief Justice, has predicted radical change in the legal sector, pointing out that intelligent search systems could now outperform junior lawyers and paralegals in reviewing large sets of documents and selecting the most relevant.

He told a legal conference last month that the legal profession had five years to reinvent itself from being legal advisers to legal technologists and criticised law schools for “churning out 20th-century lawyers”.

A recent study by Deloitte suggested that technology has already contributed to a reduction of about 31,000 jobs in the legal sector, including roles such as legal secretaries and a further 39 per cent of jobs were at “high risk” of being made redundant by machines in the next two decades.

There has been speculation that law is ripe for “Uberisation”, becoming the next target of technological disruption.

One smaller firm, Riverview Law, has partnered with the computer science department at Liverpool University to work on artifical intelligence products.

Riverview is setting-up a separate technology business to exploit its software and the intellectual property that it has and is creating. It has launched a virtual assistant Kim designed to help legal teams make quicker and better decisions.

Karl Chapman, chief executive of Riverview, said Kim has three varying levels of complexity including one level where a lawyer can ask it to suggest the best order to renegotiate a series of corporate contracts.

Many believe that AI will simply automate more routine parts of legal work so that lawyers focus on more complex, high value areas of client work.

“I would liken it to mathematicians calculating sums on slide rulers before computers. Computers didn’t do away with mathematicians who are probably more highly valued now than they were before,” said Orlando Conetta, a computer scientist and head of research and development at Pinsents.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. What is the Verifi belong to Linklaters?

A. a client’s name

B. a subsidiary company

C. computer program

D. a robot

2. How long does it take to search a single customer name for a trained junior lawyer generally?

A. 12 minutes

B. 14 minutes

C. 31 minutes

D. an hour

3. What has already contributed to a reduction of about 31,000 jobs in the legal sector according to Deloitte?

A. technology

B. paralegals

C. law schools

D. clients

4. What is the meaning of ‘Uberisation’ among legal firms?

A. build relationship with clients by app

B. globalization

C. capitalization

D. impressed by technology deeply

[1] 答案 C. computer program

解释：年利达律师事务所开发了电脑程序Verifi，可以筛查14家英国及欧洲监管登记机构的材料，为银行核查客户姓名。

[2] 答案 A. 12 minutes

解释：年利达银行业合伙人Edward Chan说：“以前，受过训练的初级律师检索一位客户的姓名平均需要12分钟。”

[3] 答案 A. technology

解释：德勤(Deloitte)最近的一项研究表明，技术进步已导致法律业减少了约3.1万个工作岗位。

[4] 答案 D. impressed by technology deeply

解释：有人推断，法律行业将迎来“优步化”(Uberisation)，成为被技术颠覆的下一个目标。