Why Hire a Lawyer When a Robot Will Do?

By Elaine Ou, Bloomberg View

[caption id="attachment_20599" align="alignright” width="230"][Image “Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg” (src=https://bol.bna.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/260492312_1-8-230x130.jpg)]Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg[/caption]

Lawyers, beware. Robots really are coming for your jobs.

Exhibit A: Venture-capital firm Invoke Capital just made a multi-million-dollar investment in Luminance , which is developing artificial intelligence to automate the legal drudgery involved in corporate mergers and acquisitions. The robot lawyer is just one of many — including offerings from Ross Intelligence and Kira Systems — aiming to replace the overworked factotums known as associate attorneys. Without the six-figure student debt, I presume.

So how do these virtual attorneys work? Well, according to Bloomberg, ...