[caffeine5150]

I am a transactional lawyer and I definitely would find value in an application that could issue spot an agreement in seconds. That said, just yesterday I spoke on a panel on the topic of how things can go wrong in a contract. We spent the majority of time talking about the dynamics and challenges that exist outside the agreement in the process of trying to memorialize the parties’ intent in a clear, concise, precise and reasonably complete manner. There are often significant challenges in terms of clearly obtaining the intent and relevant issues from the various stakeholders. And there are dynamics like relative negotiating leverage and psychology or other issues that can drive what the deal will look like regardless of pure legal issues. Also, since one never starts with a blank page, there is the contract template one starts with that must be evaluated against all this – what stays, what goes, what must change and how. Navigating these requires intangible skills, instincts, sensitivity to human dynamics, etc. It’s very much a human endeavor. So a key question is to what extent AI could help with all of these external issues. I have to think that’s much farther down the road. But having help assessing purely legal issues within the document would be a great supplement.

For a good thread on training to be a lawyer through apprenticeship, see this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16255023