Experts in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have called on lawyers to embrace technology in the discharge of their professional services.
According to them, technology is evolving rapidly and law firms must deploy its tools or die off with time. This was the consensus at this year’s ASP Ajibade Business Luncheon themed “Technology innovation and law, challenges, potentials and possibilities in the Nigerian legal landscape.”
Managing Partner of the firm, Dr Babatunde Ajibade (SAN), in his remarks, said the lecture was organised to add value to the legal profession.
“Our driving force for the yearly luncheon is our passion for the profession. We believe that the legal profession is the best profession in the world. The profession has done so much for us. We are a second-generation law firm
established in 1967. It is one of the longest surviving professional firms in the country.
“So, we think that for the profession that has done so much for us, we should give something back to sustain and improve it. That is why we started this series and are sustaining it,” he explained.
According to him, technology will become a more important factor to the progress of the legal sector and to its efficiency in the near future.
“As a profession, we must come to terms with that,” he said, adding that necessary steps must be taken to
ensure that lawyers get the best from the developments that are taking place in the
technological sector.
He said: “We think and hope that it will make a difference. We need to use technology to address delays and inefficiency in the justice sector.
“One of the greatest challenges we face in terms of adapting to technologies in the profession is that the younger generation seems to be savvier than the older ones.”
The keynote speaker, who is an associate professor, All Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Victor Rodriguez Doncel, spoke on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Law.
Explaining how technology can help the legal profession, Doncel, who spoke virtually from Spain, said AI could forecast litigation outcomes and make statistical predictions of divorce settlements based on input data and previous results.
According to him, it helps to support legal research, answer legal questions posed in natural language and can manage contracts, assess risks and generate documents. Other things it could do, he pointed out, include managing law firms and detecting tax fraud.