The Citizen Lawyer in the Coming Era: Technology is Changing the Practice of Law, but Legal Education Must Remain Committed to Humanistic Learning

26 Pages Posted: 4 Jun 2014 Last revised: 23 Jan 2020

See all articles by Kevin P. Lee

Kevin P. Lee

North Carolina Central University School of Law

Date Written: February 8, 2013

Abstract

The practice of law is undergoing a period of intensive change that is being driven by recent technological developments. These changes will not only transform the day-to-day practice of law and the economics of the legal services industry, but also will drive changes in the way legal theory is approached and the role of the lawyer in the American democracy. More precisely, while artificial intelligence has been applied to legal research and practice for decades, the development of massive amounts of data in the form of on-line legal research, and inexpensive, extremely powerful centrally located computing (i.e., cloud computing), have radically increased its capabilities, raising the prospects of significant automation in legal services. This is creating the possibility (and reality) of disruptive innovation in many areas of legal practice by creating the means of providing higher quality legal services at reduced cost. While a few papers have considered different aspects of the implications of these technologies for professional ethics, little consideration has yet been given to the broader question of what this new technology means for the evolving role of the lawyer in the American democracy, although a few have sought to consider political theory through algorithmic means (see, e.g., Hope M. Babcock, "Democracy’s Discontent in a Complex World: Can Avalanches, Sandpiles, and Finches Optimize Michael Sandel’s Civic Republican Community?," 85 GEO. L. J. 2085 (1997) (critiquing civic republican political theory using complex systems principles). This paper considers the role of the human lawyer in an era of automated legal services. It seeks to define the limits of legal automation by drawing from philosophical arguments for the limits of empirical and probabilistic methods in the social sciences. It concludes by suggesting that beyond training lawyers to be immediately commercially exploitable, legal education should seek to deepen and refine the lawyer’s ability to experience the uniquely human meaning of law and of living in a democratic polity.

Keywords: Legal technology, infomatics, professional, citizen, democracy, lawyer, citizen

Suggested Citation

Lee, Kevin Paul, The Citizen Lawyer in the Coming Era: Technology is Changing the Practice of Law, but Legal Education Must Remain Committed to Humanistic Learning (February 8, 2013). Ohio North University Law Review, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2444011

Kevin Paul Lee (Contact Author)

North Carolina Central University School of Law ( email )

Durham, NC 27707
United States

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