"Generative artificial intelligence (AI) will bring a revolution to legal services." (Min Myung-gi, CEO of Law&Good)
"In the long term, I believe there will be no option but to use AI in legal work." (Ahn Ki-soon, Head of Legal AI Research Institute at Law&Company)
Hosted by Legal Times and sponsored by Asia Economy, the '2023 Legal Tech AI Forum' was an event where attendees could experience everything about domestic legal tech in 2023.
On the 18th, the '2023 Legal Tech AI Forum' was held at the POSCO Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. About 200 high-ranking officials from the legal sector, corporations, government, law schools, and legal experts attended the forum. Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@
Held on the 18th at the POSCO Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, the forum brought together leading domestic legal tech companies, senior government and legal officials, and legal experts to review the current status and vision of the domestic legal tech industry and explore ways for mutual growth.
Pascal Rosier, Director of North Asia at LexisNexis, a comprehensive U.S. legal information company, delivered a special lecture titled "The Evolution of Generative AI in the Legal Field," introducing the global development status of generative AI from a global perspective.
At the '2023 LegalTech AI Forum' held on the 18th at the POSCO Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Pascal Rosier, Director of LexisNexis North Asia, is giving a special lecture. Photo by Legal Times
He said, "According to researchers, AI capabilities are expected to catch up with the human brain around 2040," adding, "Legal professionals, as specialists, must recognize these changes and developments and keep up with the trends."
Director Rosier emphasized, "Unlike generalized AI such as ChatGPT, legal AI requires verification of the provided information, so overcoming AI's limitation of 'inaccuracy' is crucial. Therefore, the efforts of legal tech companies along with cooperation from the legal community are more important than anything else." He highlighted the need for collaboration between companies and the legal sector to solve the hallucination problem, where generative AI produces false information as if it were true. He also stressed, "Regarding privacy violations and data security issues caused by AI technology, we must build a flawless 'data governance' system together."
On the 18th, at the POSCO Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Goo Tae-eon, co-chairman of the Legal Tech Industry Council of the Korea Startup Forum, delivered a congratulatory speech at the '2023 Legal Tech AI Forum.' Photo by Choi Seok-jin
Gu Tae-eon, Co-Chairman of the Legal Tech Industry Council at Korea Startup Forum, congratulated the forum in his congratulatory speech, saying, "Legal platforms have gone through many ups and downs, and I sincerely congratulate the holding of this Legal Tech AI Forum at a time when legal issues have been settled with the Ministry of Justice's cancellation of lawyer disciplinary actions."
He said, "The legal tech industry, which will lead the digital transformation of the oldest industry, the legal industry, is still in its early stages," adding, "Compared to advanced countries where legal tech companies have entered a stage that helps citizens enjoy convenient and competent legal consumption, we are quite late. Legal tech will lead the normalization of legal consumption and grow the legal market to a scale comparable to the medical market."
On the 18th, attendees are experiencing booths operated by legal tech companies participating in the '2023 Legal Tech AI Forum' held at the POSCO Center Art Hall in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Photo by Choi Seok-jin.
At the forum, representatives of major domestic legal tech companies took the stage to introduce their companies' main products, services, and new technologies under development. Outside the conference room where the forum was held, booths were set up where attendees could directly experience product demonstrations from each company. (Refer to the related article in this paper on the 18th, '2023 Legal Tech AI Forum' Legal Platform Experience... From Judgment Analysis to Legal Document Drafting)
Lee Jin, CEO of LBox, which provides case law search services, said, "I believe drawing conclusions is a uniquely human domain," adding, "Therefore, the direction legal AI should evolve is not to generate conclusions but to supplement the logical review process, which takes a lot of time for humans to reach conclusions as a result of their unique creative thinking, based on generative AI. I think this is the way humans and legal AI can coexist."
Min Myung-gi, CEO of Law&Good, which provides litigation finance services supporting clients' attorney fees, said, "Over the past 10 years, the number of lawyers has nearly tripled, and the legal market has grown about 2.3 times in total lawyer revenue, showing some quantitative growth," but added, "However, the concentration in medium to large law firms with annual sales exceeding 10 billion KRW, where employment of retired senior public officials is restricted, is severe."
He emphasized, "By innovating the interaction between clients and lawyers, we need to reduce the economic burden on clients and make it unnecessary for lawyers to lower their fees," adding, "The important thing is to grow the pie of the legal market."
Min said, "Our vision is to expand the legal market by utilizing technology and capital," adding, "We must expand the potential legal demand and grow the legal market pie by enhancing accessibility to lawyers and alleviating economic burdens."
At the end of his lecture, Min said, "In my opinion, generative AI will bring a revolution to legal services because generative AI understands and communicates in natural language," adding, "Legal work fundamentally involves understanding, organizing, and persuading by considering context, which aligns best with generative AI."
He continued, "Now, this AI will go beyond providing basic information delivery or communication and maximize lawyers' work efficiency. As I develop this, I am increasingly confident of this."
Ahn Ki-soon, Head of Legal AI Research Institute at Law&Company, operator of LawTalk, which provides services such as lawyer advertising, online legal consultation, and case law search, explained the structure of legal AI and large language models (LLM) in detail and said, "Considering the specificity of the legal field, hallucination is a problem that must be solved."
He said, "As you may have seen in the news, New York lawyers submitted fake case law provided by ChatGPT to the court, which caused embarrassment and fines," emphasizing, "In the legal field where accuracy is critical, hallucination is fatal, so we must recognize this problem and devise solutions."
Ahn added, "This is my opinion, but I have referred extensively to a book written by a European scholar and a Japanese lawyer," and said, "In the long term, I believe there will be no option but to use AI in legal work." He further predicted, "First, routine tasks will be affected first, and second, the status of experts who can break patterns will rise."
Additionally, at the forum, Cho Won-hee, lead attorney at Delight Law Firm, gave a lecture on "Regulatory Standards for Legal Tech and Tasks for Amending the Attorney Act," and Choi Hyun-yoon, attorney at Lynn Law Firm, spoke on "Japan Government's Digital Transformation Policy and Legal Tech Status."
On the 18th, at the POSCO Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Ko Jin, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Digital Platform Government, delivered a congratulatory speech at the '2023 Legal Tech AI Forum.' Photo by Legal Times
Meanwhile, representing the government, Ko Jin, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Digital Platform Government, delivered a special invitation congratulatory speech, saying, "Countries are now competing in technology and AI leadership," adding, "I believe the legal field is also riding the wave of this AI innovation."
Chairman Ko said, "Many people wonder why President Yoon Seok-yeol introduced the Digital Platform Government when there was already e-government and digital government," explaining, "The Digital Platform Government is a strategy to upgrade e-government one step further and a government innovation strategy to respond to the AI era."
He added, "The goal is for the government to actively utilize the latest digital technologies and private sector innovation capabilities so that humans can grow together," and said, "On a digital platform where all data converges, citizens, companies, and the government will solve social problems together and create new value."
Finally, he said, "The Digital Platform Government Committee will spare no policy support to ensure the digital innovation of the legal field continues."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
