The Sedona Conference^® (TSC) Working Group 7 has published The Sedona Canada Primer on Artificial Intelligence and The Practice of Law.

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), a term that for most people existed primarily in the realm of science fiction, has swiftly transitioned into a pervasive reality in many sectors, including the legal domain. The implementation of AI is reshaping the traditional contours of the legal profession, offering myriad opportunities while simultaneously presenting novel challenges.

The Sedona Canada Primer on Artificial Intelligence and The Practice of Law (available for download here) delves into these issues, providing an overview of how AI is transforming the practice of law. It aims to explore various types of AI tools currently in use, their implications for lawyers, law firms, clients, and judges, and potential future developments in this field. This Primer also discusses ethical considerations that arise from the use of AI in law and how the legal profession can navigate these challenges.

The Primer is organized into seven sections (plus a brief Conclusion), as follows:

• Introduction: Establishes the scope of the Primer as focused on AI systems designed for “specific tasks and operate under a limited set of constraints,” distinguishing between AI that automates (replaces human effort) and augments (enhances human abilities). It does not cover hypothetical “Artificial General Intelligence (AGI),” which would possess human-like learning and problem-solving capabilities across an unlimited range of problems.
• Types of Artificial Intelligence and their Applications: Details two primary types of AI (Expert Systems and Machine Learning, which discusses the different machine learning approaches) and specific AI applications: AI-generated images, computer vision, speech recognition, audio search, audio generation).
• How AI is Used in Legal Practice: Details the various areas of legal practice being impacted by AI. Interestingly, eDiscovery has only two identified subcategories for use cases: word clustering and Technology Assisted Review (TAR). My assumption is that’s because many of the other uses – Identification and Redaction of PII and PHI, Sentiment Analysis, Language Detection and Translation, Transforming Audio to Text, Image Classification (and several more) – aren’t limited to just eDiscovery.
• Benefits of Artificial Intelligence: Discusses several significant advantages AI provides for legal practice, including better quality and greater consistency, increased defensibility, greater efficiency, permitting lawyers to focus on higher-level work, cost savings, and potential increases in access to justice.
• Considerations When Using Artificial Intelligence: Discusses several important challenges and considerations that apply to legal applications, including data quality, correlation vs. causation, bias in AI, defensibility and validation, accountability, confidentiality, privilege, and security, authentication and admissibility issues, and ethical considerations.
• Current and Future Regulatory Responses: Discusses the current regulatory landscape, including Canada’s Bill C-27 (Artificial Intelligence and Data Act – AIDA), EU’s GDPR and the EU AI Act, and “jurisdiction-specific and industry-specific regulation” in the US (like biometric laws in Illinois and Texas and employment bias audits in New York).
• Looking Ahead: As this section title indicates, it looks ahead at key developments such as the rise in authentication and admissibility issues due to deepfakes, GenAI, access to justice, robotics, general or strong AI and superintelligence.

The 79(!) page PDF file is available for download here.

Oh Canada! That’s not all – next week is eDiscovery Day, Canada! The Sedona Conference Working Group 7 (Sedona Canada) is hosting a full day of webinars on current issues in eDiscovery on Thursday, June 19, scheduled so that participants from St. John’s to Vancouver can all attend. In addition, there will be a special introductory webinar – eDiscovery 101 – on Tuesday, June 17, for those new to the field or those who want a refresher on the basics. While this program will concentrate on Canadian law and practice, all are welcome. The webinars will be conducted in English with French closed captioning.

As the French Canadians would say: “Il est encore temps de s’inscrire!” English-speaking Canadians would translate that to “There’s still time to register!”, which you can learn more about the sessions and do here!

So, what do you think? Is the Sedona Canada Primer on Artificial Intelligence and The Practice of Law missing anything? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.