Full transcript
Introduction
0:00Democracy and the rule of law is a relatively recent
0:03and always fragile enterprise.
0:06Dictators and autocrats have figured out that they can use the rule of law
0:12to their advantage.
0:20Hello, David.
0:21Good afternoon.
0:22It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to chat with you today.
0:25And I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about the trends in the legal market.
0:31And there are three items, three things that I would like to comment with you.
0:35The first one, of course, is AI,
0:38the second one is the rule of law,
0:41and the third one is legal education.
AI's Impact on Legal Services
0:45So starting with the most obvious one,
0:48AI, how do you think AI will impact two different things:
0:53one is the demand, the need, the request for legal services.
1:00Will we see in the future
1:02higher or less need for legal services?
1:06And the second one is who will deliver these legal services?
1:10Will the law firms the general functions that
1:13the lawyers or what is your opinion on this.
1:16So thank you, Soledad.
1:17It's a great pleasure to be here.
1:19And if I knew the answers to those questions, I would be extremely rich.
1:24The fact of the matter is, no one really knows the answers
1:27to those questions.
1:28We are in the Stone Age of what,
1:32by almost any definition, is going to be the most transformative
1:37technological revolution I don't know, since
1:41electricity or something like that, and maybe even more.
1:45In the short term,
1:48generative AI and these new technologies will be,
1:53roughly speaking, a welfare act for lawyers.
1:56Which means every single aspect of these
2:01new technologies will be litigated.
2:04Right?
2:04Intellectual property: who owns the content?
2:08Who's responsible for hallucinations?
2:11It will be regulated at multiple levels and conflicting levels, in which only
2:17lawyers will be able to figure out and help clients to sort through.
2:23So this is going to create
2:27an explosion of demand around legal services
2:32relating to these new technologies.
2:35That's a kind of short term first order effect.
2:39Second, people are already
2:43and will increasingly look for ways
2:46to use these new technologies
2:50to both supplement
2:53and replace demand.
2:56That is, you will see lots of legal services
3:01providers, they've gone from a posture of banning everyone from
3:05using them to now trying to figure out how to use them
3:09to increase their efficiency, their productivity,
3:12their profitability.
3:15There is no question that, like all technologies,
3:19they will also replace
3:22the need for some human work
3:26that is currently done by human legal professionals, the kinds of tasks
3:32that, quite frankly, you never needed a law degree to do anyway, like reading
3:37documents, doing basic kinds of drafting, basic kinds of research.
3:42Who are most at risk are not junior level people,
3:46but there are mid-level partners
3:51who do not have their own book of business
3:54and who do narrow technical specialties.
3:58Because ChatGPT is already
4:00very good at that, and it will only get exponentially better.
4:05Last point, who will do these services?
4:09As the provision of services
4:12moves to what can be learned from
4:16crunching large amounts of data
4:19by sophisticated and capable machines.
4:25That is not the exclusive
4:27province of people who go to law school,
4:31and therefore we are going to see
4:34an explosion of the providers who are providing services
4:40at the intersection of law, technology, strategy,
4:43psychology, human resources.
4:46All of these things are now an increasingly contested
4:50domain with lots of potential providers.
4:53So I guess that as we have seen before,
4:57every revolution, every relevant transformation of society has had,
5:02as a result, a demand and a request for more legal services.
5:07Uncertainty calls for more demand of legal services.
Will Lawyers Benefit From AI?
5:11Now, the question with this AI revolution is
5:14how will the legal services providers
5:17benefit from the use of this technology in order to still be the ones
5:22who provide these services_ So that's one way to look at the problem.
5:26A different way to look at the problem is how are individuals
5:31and organizations of all kind going to deal with increasing
5:34uncertainty, of which law is a piece but only a piece?
5:38And so I think just like you have seen in lots of other fields,
5:42you're going to see an explosion in what you might call do-it-yourself services.
5:48Direct access, direct business-to-consumer access to services.
5:53You're likely to see big organizations
5:57wrapping legal into other products they provide.
6:02Like you want a mortgage.
6:03Well, right now you go to a bank and then you go to a lawyer.
6:07Why is it that you might not be able to have the legal services around
6:12buying and selling real estate wrapped into products
6:15that are sold by mortgage companies or banks?
6:19Now there's a regulatory set of questions that sits on top of that.
6:24But as we have found out over time, regulation
6:28rarely stops innovation.
6:31It may slow down the pace of it.
6:33It may divert it.
6:34when back to your first point, there's a big demand
6:39for not only a particular service,
6:42but managing complex transactions in an increasingly complex
6:48and volatile world as quickly and efficiently as possible.
6:52So law is not the only solution, but it's part of the solution.
6:56I believe that law should be at the center
6:59of the debate around the use of AI, the ethical use of AI
7:04and the use of AI in the benefit of society.
7:08Lawyers, law students and legal academics should not wait
7:12for the big tech companies to make all the decisions.
7:15They should be more at the forefront of the debate.
7:19And this drives me to the second point, which is the rule of law,
7:24what we are seeing around the world now and what we have seen in in
7:28several regions is that the situation, the respect of the rule of law,
Can the Rule of Law Protect Democracy?
7:33can change in a shorter period of time than we would have thought of.
7:38And we have seen governments take over and regimes take over.
7:43We have seen decisions being made around institutions,
7:47and we have seen how fast these can have an impact in society,
7:52in the lives of citizens and human rights.
7:56What do you think is at risk here?
7:58What do you think is the responsibility of law schools,
8:01and how far should law schools and legal academics go?
8:05Democracy, the rule of law, is a relatively recent
8:09and always fragile enterprise.
8:13Most of the world, for most of humankind, has been ruled
8:17by kings and dictators and other forms of autocrats.
8:21The difference, I think, today is that
8:24we associate autocracy with the opposite of the rule of law,
8:30that dictators don't want law.
8:33But in fact, what we have seen
8:36is that dictators and autocrats have figured out
8:40that they can use the rule of law to their advantage.
8:44So legal autocracy used to be an oxymoron.
8:49It's now something that we have seen
8:52in various places in Europe, in Latin America,
8:56and certainly the risk of it
8:59in my own country at the moment.
9:02So the rule of law
9:07is an understanding about
9:11the use of law and legal institutions,
9:15which can be put to many different purposes.
9:18As legal educators, we are used to thinking of ourselves
9:24as the first line and last important line of defense of the rule of law.
9:30And that is true.
9:32But it's also true that we have seen lawyers
9:35undermining the very rule of law that they were designed to protect.
9:40The third point is
9:43what is the role of legal education
9:49in an environment in which law is a part,
9:54but only a part of the complex
9:57web of large-scale
10:00trends like technology and globalization and demographic
10:05change and geopolitical instability.
10:09Law schools need to be much more engaged
10:14in helping their graduates and their faculties
10:21and the society as a whole
10:24understand the complex interdependence
10:27of these large-scale forces for the preservation
10:32of democratic values and the rule of law.
10:35So it's like there's a malpractice of the rule of law first.
10:39And this
10:40takes me, David, to my last topic, which is legal education.
10:45The recent responsibility, which is also an opportunity
10:49among law schools currently because the world needs
What Is The Future of Law Schools?
10:53professionals and needs graduates who are trained in the values of law,
10:58professionals who research on ethics of AI.
11:02Where do you see the opportunity as well as the challenge?
11:06The biggest one probably is the regulation of the access to the legal profession.
11:10Another one is the not always easy path to global
11:15and international legal education, the extremely regulated,
11:20academic content.
11:21But still, I think this is a very important moment
11:24and a moment
11:25where there are big opportunities for law schools to be heard out there.
11:29What is your opinion?
11:31So I tell my students that this is both
11:36the most
11:37terrifying and the most exciting time to become a lawyer.
11:42There was a very set,
11:46well known, longstanding understanding of what
11:50the purpose of law schools were, what we were supposed to be teaching,
11:54what our graduates were expected to do when they graduated.
11:58Almost none of that is true today.
12:01And that is scary because many of the things that we took
12:07for granted about how we were preparing our students has been destabilized.
12:13And much of what we thought was true may no longer be true.
12:17And many things we never thought about before.
12:21But it's also really exciting.
12:23There is much more of an opportunity
12:26to make your own way, to remake
12:30what the fundamental fabric of institutions
12:36we took for granted could never change are now changing before our eyes.
12:40I don't know, take remote work.
12:43You have to be in-person five days a week.
12:45And then suddenly, within an instant, everybody was online.
12:48Now, the challenge for us is that law schools
12:53and the people who run them and teach in them,
12:57have been trained in disciplinary silos, which aren't even just about law but
13:02your particular area in the law, private law, public law, international law.
13:07And the problem is that we are increasingly
13:11being asked to be a part of solving sociology and psychology
13:17and economics and computer science and globalization and many other things.
13:23That's a challenge for us to figure out
13:26how do we reconfigure our institutions
13:29to prepare people to live in this kind of world?
13:34Much of what we used to train them for
13:38is already well done by ChatGPT and other AI, and will be more so.
13:44We can be a part, but only a part of what is going to be
13:50one of the most important transformations, in human history.
13:55Well, let's hope for a
13:56positive future for law schools in the benefit of society,
14:00for a successful establishment of the rule of law worldwide.
14:05And let's hope for legal services providers
14:07to know how to use AI in the benefit of the clients,
14:11in the benefit of efficiency and in the benefit of society.
14:15Thank you very much, David.
14:16It has been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.