Dec 17th 2017, 17:28

OH NO!
ANOTHER AI BOOK HITS THE SHELVES!
THIS TIME FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An appreciation by Elizabeth Robson Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambers and Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) and “the law” lie, as Kevin Ashley writes so eloquently in his introduction “on the cusp of a revolution that began with text analytic programs like IBM's Watson and Debater and the open-source information management architectures on which they are based”. A good start for the reader brushing up skills on recent developments in AI and analytics!
We welcome this far-sighted new work on AI and legal analytics appearing, as it does, at just the right time for the new debate. Ashley continues his mission, stating that “new legal applications are beginning to appear” so these new tools are “designed to explain computational processes to non-programmers”.

The book describes how these tools will change the way we practice law, “specifically by connecting computational models of legal reasoning directly with legal text, generating arguments for and against particular outcomes, predicting outcomes and explaining these predictions with reasons that legal professionals will be able to evaluate for themselves”. Readers can take it from the author that big changes are on the way, ad if we didn’t probably know that already!

The legal applications themselves will support conceptual legal information retrieval and allow cognitive computing, enabling a collaboration between humans and computers in which each does what it can do best. We feel that anyone interested in how AI is changing the practice of law should read this illuminating work now before it is too late. And be prepared for many more books like this to appear in the next couple of years as the technological advances continue.

The publication date for this edition is cited as at 31st October 2017.

'In relation to the composition of this book, it provides a comprehensive and user-friendly description of this interdisciplinary area, focusing on the suitability of developing legal devices based on artificial intelligence. The structure of the work allows users to analyse how representation of legal logic knowledge occurs, and its suitability for computational implementations ... On this matter, the author provides relevant and understandable illustrations that facilitate the linkage between theory and the development of the techno legal implementations. ... Artificial Intelligence and Legal Analytics: New Tools for Law Practice in the Digital Age is a fundamental work for those of us who are interested in the intersection between intelligent technology and the legal field, and its promising future.' Jesus Manuel Niebla Zatarain, SCRIPTed