Is the Future of Law a Driverless Car?: Assessing How the Data-Analytics Revolution will Transform Legal Practice

Eric L. Talley

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), 2018, vol. 174, issue 1, 183-205

Abstract: Data analytics are quickly transforming law, challenging its survival as a vibrant profession for natural persons. I argue that data analytics will continue to penetrate law, even in domains heretofore dominated by human decision-makers. I demonstrate this claim by describing how machine-learning techniques can be used to identify important fiduciary waivers. Notwithstanding their transformative power, however, I remain doubtful that data analytics will substantially displace law. The most powerful approaches in data analytics as applied to law require human practitioner inputs to train, calibrate, and supervise machine classifiers. Moreover, law's normative/prescriptive commitments are irreducibly dynamic and complex - traits poorly matched to algorithmic prediction.

Keywords: machine learning; natural-language processing; artificial intelligence; data analytics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K0 K41 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/is-the-futu ... 45618x15135819919253 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201803)174:1_183:itfola_2.0.tx_2-p

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

DOI: 10.1628/093245618X15135819919253

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) is currently edited by Gerd Mühlheußer and Bayer, Ralph-C

More articles in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().