Legal Tech, the Law Firm and the Imagination of the Right Legal Answer
(2023) In Law and Critique 34. p.381-394- Abstract
- Legal tech is growing, and its growth provokes anxieties about the future of the legal profession as such. In this article, we examine the impact of legal tech on the central role of lawyers at law firms in crafting an imagined ‘right legal answer’ by drawing on Duncan Kennedy’s suggestion that a claim to the rightness of one’s legal propositions is a central characteristic of the legal profession. We first ask how changes in the organisation of legal services affect the ability of lawyers at law firms to produce that ‘right legal answer’. While legal tech only exacerbates already ongoing processes of eradication of routine tasks, we find that it continues to mask the role of ideology in arriving at a right legal answer under a new layer... (More)
- Legal tech is growing, and its growth provokes anxieties about the future of the legal profession as such. In this article, we examine the impact of legal tech on the central role of lawyers at law firms in crafting an imagined ‘right legal answer’ by drawing on Duncan Kennedy’s suggestion that a claim to the rightness of one’s legal propositions is a central characteristic of the legal profession. We first ask how changes in the organisation of legal services affect the ability of lawyers at law firms to produce that ‘right legal answer’. While legal tech only exacerbates already ongoing processes of eradication of routine tasks, we find that it continues to mask the role of ideology in arriving at a right legal answer under a new layer of technological projection. Second, we ask how lawyers’ ability to produce ‘the right legal answer’ is affected by, first, expert systems and, second, a legal tech application named Bryter, representing a no-code system. We find that expert systems do not permit to uphold the unity of the lawyer required for Kennedy’s model of the right legal answer, but that no-code systems as Bryter do so. No-code systems can be reduced to a slogan: Have the lawyer, but evict her ideological temptations more efficiently than before! (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/b29e58a8-a325-4c3c-8ec6-9159a6447f8d
- author
- Parsa, Amin LU ; Noll, Gregor ; Brännström, Leila LU and Gunneflo, Markus LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2023-10-10
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Folkrätt, Public international law
- in
- Law and Critique
- volume
- 34
- pages
- 381 - 394
- publisher
- Springer
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85173681499
- ISSN
- 0957-8536
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10978-023-09363-4
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- b29e58a8-a325-4c3c-8ec6-9159a6447f8d
- date added to LUP
- 2023-10-26 13:11:01
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:39:44
@article{b29e58a8-a325-4c3c-8ec6-9159a6447f8d,
abstract = {{Legal tech is growing, and its growth provokes anxieties about the future of the legal profession as such. In this article, we examine the impact of legal tech on the central role of lawyers at law firms in crafting an imagined ‘right legal answer’ by drawing on Duncan Kennedy’s suggestion that a claim to the rightness of one’s legal propositions is a central characteristic of the legal profession. We first ask how changes in the organisation of legal services affect the ability of lawyers at law firms to produce that ‘right legal answer’. While legal tech only exacerbates already ongoing processes of eradication of routine tasks, we find that it continues to mask the role of ideology in arriving at a right legal answer under a new layer of technological projection. Second, we ask how lawyers’ ability to produce ‘the right legal answer’ is affected by, first, expert systems and, second, a legal tech application named Bryter, representing a no-code system. We find that expert systems do not permit to uphold the unity of the lawyer required for Kennedy’s model of the right legal answer, but that no-code systems as Bryter do so. No-code systems can be reduced to a slogan: Have the lawyer, but evict her ideological temptations more efficiently than before!}},
author = {{Parsa, Amin and Noll, Gregor and Brännström, Leila and Gunneflo, Markus}},
issn = {{0957-8536}},
keywords = {{Folkrätt; Public international law}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{10}},
pages = {{381--394}},
publisher = {{Springer}},
series = {{Law and Critique}},
title = {{Legal Tech, the Law Firm and the Imagination of the Right Legal Answer}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09363-4}},
doi = {{10.1007/s10978-023-09363-4}},
volume = {{34}},
year = {{2023}},
}