What if the Computer Replaces the Lawyer?: Exploring How Computing Redefines Law, Redirects Legal Services, and Reshapes the Legal Industry (English Edition)

The Book basically stresses that Artificial Intelligence-driven software systems have so invaded the legal industry with so much impunity that they are making threatening attempts to replace lawyers, especially solicitors, in some of their specialized tasks. In attempting to establish this, the book discusses AI and Law, zeroing in on Expert Systems, and yet narrowing down to Legal Expert Systems and other types of legal applications, the challenge of automating legal reasoning, the contemporary realities of legal expert systems, next generation legal expert systems, and of course, the future of AI. Also, it highlights the various technologies that have greatly impacted upon law, law practice and the legal profession to reveal more deeply how non-lawyers ostensibly usurp the position of lawyers in legal service delivery, thus threatening to disintermediate the lawyer. It, however, also suggests how lawyers themselves can reintermediate the legal profession as the only medium of legal service delivery. In conclusion, it makes the humble submission that if the lawyer shouldn’t be replaced by the computer, the lawyer should become the computer, making various recommendations as the way forward for the legal profession in Nigeria particularly, and Africa by extension. This book is per se a clarion call on lawyers everywhere, especially, Africa, where law lags farthest behind technology, to digitize in order to survive and thrive in this 21st century digital economy.