美国国家公共电台 NPR From Post-it Notes To Algorithms: How Automation Is Changing Legal Work

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Now it's time for All Tech Considered...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIEGEL: ...And the next installment¹ in our occasional series, Is My Job Safe? With advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, more people are asking that question. Asma Khalid of member station WBUR looks at how AI is changing how lawyers work.

ASMA KHALID, BYLINE²: Shannon Capone Kirk runs the e-discovery practice at Ropes & Gray. It's a prestigious³ law firm with panoramic⁴ views of the Boston skyline. In order to understand what she does, you've got to understand what life was like when she was just starting out as a lawyer in the late '90s. Her first job was document review.

SHANNON CAPONE KIRK: What that meant was literally⁵ spending weeks upon weeks in either a warehouse⁶ or a conference room flipping⁷ through banker's boxes and reading documents, paper documents.

KHALID: Kirk says every big corporate⁸ law firm used an army of first-year law grads for this manual labor⁹.

KIRK: And if we found something that was relevant to the litigation, we would tag it with Post-it notes. And that was it. That was how archaic¹⁰ it was.

KHALID: It was time-consuming and expensive, so Kirk says firms began to use software. And in the last few years, the algorithms have gotten more sophisticated and more popular. It's not just search terms. It's the machine learning how to prioritize what documents a lawyer finds relevant. The job of a corporate lawyer is changing. And Kirk says it's not just 'cause of technology.

KIRK: Part of it is the technology. But the other part of it is the industry now has numerous options for contract attorneys.

KHALID: In law, there are two simultaneous trends going on - tech and outsourcing. Gabe Teninbaum teaches a class at Suffolk Law School in Boston called Lawyering in the Age of Smart Machines (ph). He says we're nowhere near the death of lawyering, but some legal work will go away forever.

GABE TENINBAUM: There are some entire areas of law where basically the whole practice area could be automated¹¹. Any time there's legal work that is easily repeatable - in other words, wills, trusts, residential¹² real estate closing.

KHALID: And Teninbaum says he's already seeing this. He points to LegalZoom, the tech company that charges a fraction of what a traditional law practice would. By the way, LegalZoom is an NPR sponsor.

TENINBAUM: Over time, you'll see continued sort of erosion of traditional legal jobs with technical jobs.

KHALID: Like creating automated contracts. Think TurboTax.

TENINBAUM: The same way that you or I might use software at the end of the year to fill out our taxes and create a tax return in just a few minutes for just a few dollars, we can do that with legal forms.

KHALID: Teninbaum says this is the new frontier for law. Automation allows lawyers to take on more cases for less money. And firms don't need to hire as many employees. Instead, they can use contract attorneys like Kellie Tiller. She sifts¹³ through legal documents on a computer for hours doing e-discovery. It's a job that requires a lot of patience.

KELLIE TILLER: Just your tolerance¹⁴ for being able to sit and continuously look at a computer screen where sometimes the words may or may not blend together 'cause you feel like you've seen the same two or three sentences over and over and over again.

KHALID: She's making less than $30 an hour. A law firm attorney would have charged a couple hundred dollars for this same work. Tiller is 34 and admits this work was not what she had envisioned for herself, but...

TILLER: For me, what it means is an opportunity to break into the legal profession. As we know, residual¹⁵ bills, they don't stop because we are employed.

KHALID: Tiller isn't scared by the technology. In fact, she says it'll likely make her work more efficient. Plus, she just started a new gig as a public defender¹⁶. Tiller's story supports an idea people often bring up, a sort of possible silver lining¹⁷ in this shifting job market, the idea that as private law firm jobs dwindle¹⁸, more lawyers may enter public service. For NPR News, I'm Asma Khalid.

1 installment   

n.(instalment)分期付款；(连载的)一期

参考例句：

• I shall soon pay the last installment of my debt.不久我将偿付我的最后一期债款。
• He likes to buy things on the installment plan.他喜欢用分期付款法购买货物。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 prestigious   

adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的

参考例句：

• The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
• You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。

4 panoramic   

adj. 全景的

参考例句：

• Most rooms enjoy panoramic views of the sea. 大多数房间都能看到海的全景。
• In a panoramic survey of nature, speed is interesting because it has a ceiling. 概观自然全景，速率是有趣的，因为它有一个上限。

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

6 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

7 flipping   

讨厌之极的

参考例句：

• I hate this flipping hotel! 我讨厌这个该死的旅馆！
• Don't go flipping your lid. 别发火。

8 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

9 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

10 archaic   

adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的

参考例句：

• The company does some things in archaic ways,such as not using computers for bookkeeping.这个公司有些做法陈旧，如记账不使用电脑。
• Shaanxi is one of the Chinese archaic civilized origins which has a long history.陕西省是中国古代文明发祥之一，有悠久的历史。

11 automated   

a.自动化的

参考例句：

• The entire manufacturing process has been automated. 整个生产过程已自动化。
• Automated Highway System (AHS) is recently regarded as one subsystem of Intelligent Transport System (ITS). 近年来自动公路系统(Automated Highway System,AHS)，作为智能运输系统的子系统之一越来越受到重视。

12 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

13 sifts   

v.筛( sift的第三人称单数 )；筛滤；细查；详审

参考例句：

• He sifts you to free you from your husks. 他将你们筛选，使你们摆脱麸糠。 来自互联网
• The sunshine sifts through the cloud. 阳光透过云层照射下来。 来自互联网

14 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

15 residual   

adj.复播复映追加时间；存留下来的，剩余的

参考例句：

• There are still a few residual problems with the computer program.电脑程序还有一些残留问题。
• The resulting residual chromatism is known as secondary spectrum.所得到的剩余色差叫做二次光谱。

16 defender   

n.保卫者，拥护者，辩护人

参考例句：

• He shouldered off a defender and shot at goal.他用肩膀挡开防守队员，然后射门。
• The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。

17 lining   

n.衬里，衬料

参考例句：

• The lining of my coat is torn.我的外套衬里破了。
• Moss makes an attractive lining to wire baskets.用苔藓垫在铁丝篮里很漂亮。

18 dwindle   

v.逐渐变小（或减少）

参考例句：

• The factory's workforce has dwindled from over 4,000 to a few hundred.工厂雇员总数已经从4,000多人减少到几百人。
• He is struggling to come to terms with his dwindling authority.他正努力适应自己权力被削弱这一局面。