[da39a3ee]

> I honestly don't think that (human) lawyers can be eliminated

That sounds very plausible. But do you think that human lawyers might gradually become a profession of people whose job partly involves interfacing with a software implementation of (large) parts of the legal code? And do you think there is any hope for defining (large) parts of the legal code in a formal language with well-defined semantics?

[davidm888]

The challenge is that there are often many choices to make; the choices often benefit one party over the other; and either the choices themselves or the possible ramifications of those choices are not well understood by the parties. No two (separate groups of) parties are identical, and to an extent, no two projects are identical. So there's no single "right" answer that can be defined that works in every case, and it very often comes down to bargaining power and subjective risk aversion. I think there's more room for standardized or even automated contract provisions for less complicated transactions, but there are still some dangers. For example, a lot of real estate purchase agreements have been standardized by various state real estate associations that publish forms with various check-boxes for choices. The real estate agents in this case would be the ones "whose job partly involves interfacing with" software (or in this example, paper forms with physical checkboxes in many cases). From experience (I did real estate litigation for a few years), I can say that this didn't always work out so well... because the agents and the parties have to both understand the meaning of what they're choosing and the potential impact of those choices, and that requires an understanding of the law which is complex and not static. Relying on the form is nowhere near enough. This difficulty is vastly greater in areas of the law that are shifting more rapidly, like IP.