Law firm Baker & Hostetler has become the first official law firm to announce that they have hired an artificially intelligent lawyer named Ross.
The firm hired Ross for their bankruptcy practice which currently employs 50 human lawyers.
Andrew Arruda, the CEO and Co-founder of the Y Combinator-backed ROSS Intelligence revealed that Ross has also been signed with several other firms who will soon make their own announcements.
Ross, who was built on IBM’s cognitive computer Watson, is coined as “the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney”. Ross can read and understand language, research the entire body of law and legal history, form hypotheses, and cite precedential cases to support his conclusions.
Like any AI, Ross gains knowledge and speed with experience. Ross is capable of narrowing down thousands of results to only the most relevant cases and present them to humans in understandable language.
According to the Ross Intelligence website:
“You ask your questions in plain English, as you would a colleague, and ROSS then reads through the entire body of law and returns a cited answer and topical readings from legislation, case law and secondary sources to get you up-to-speed quickly. In addition, ROSS monitors the law around the clock to notify you of new court decisions that can affect your case.”
Bob Craig, Baker & Hostetler’s chief information supported the firms decision to hire an AI, saying:
“At BakerHostetler, we believe that emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help enhance the services we deliver to our clients.
“BakerHostetler has been using ROSS since the first days of its deployment, and we are proud to partner with a true leader in the industry as we continue to develop additional AI legal assistants.”
In any case, we can all rest easy knowing a super smart computer could be handling our bankruptcy cases, right?
