Electronic lawyers are already among us

It used to be that automation was only something for assembly lines. But now it's reaching offices. Think you'll never lose your job to a computer? Think again.

Companies are starting to use sophisticated software to analyse legal documents. Major lawsuits today often make it necessary to read and understand millions of documents. A task that takes lawyers months can now be done by computers in a couple of days — and at a fraction of the cost.

"People get bored; people get headaches. Computers don't," Bill Herr, a lawyer for a major chemical company, told The New York Times. One lawyer with a computer will soon be able to do the work of 500 of today's lawyers, predicts Mike Lynch of the e-discovery company Autonomy.

What viewers of the quiz show Jeopardy! saw in one computer's performance in February is only the beginning. Today's "e-discovery" software is able to understand not only specific terms, but also general references to them. Furthermore, it can deduce patterns of human behaviour that documents suggest — such as when a person is trying to cover something up.

How did the computers get to be so good? They've been practising on a database of five million e-mails — from the Enron Corporation. The American energy company was one of the most corrupt in modern history.