Artificial Intelligence: Application Today and Implications Tomorrow

This paper analyzes the applications of artificial intelligence to the legal industry, specifically in the fields of legal research and contract drafting. First, it will look at the implications of artificial intelligence (A.I.) for the current practice of law. Second, it will delve into the future implications of A.I. on law firms and the possible regulatory challenges that come with A.I. The proliferation of A.I. in the legal sphere will give laymen (clients) access to the information and services traditionally provided exclusively by attorneys. With an increase in access to these services will come a change in the role that lawyers must play. A.I. is a tool that will increase access to cheaper and more efficient services, but non-lawyers lack the training to analyze and understand information it puts out. The role of lawyers will change to fill this role, namely utilizing these tools to create a better work product with greater efficiency for their clients

Artificial Intelligence: Application Today and Implications Tomorrow

This paper analyzes the applications of artificial intelligence to the legal industry, specifically in the fields of legal research and contract drafting. First, it will look at the implications of artificial intelligence (A.I.) for the current practice of law. Second, it will delve into the future implications of A.I. on law firms and the possible regulatory challenges that come with A.I. The proliferation of A.I. in the legal sphere will give laymen (clients) access to the information and services traditionally provided exclusively by attorneys. With an increase in access to these services will come a change in the role that lawyers must play. A.I. is a tool that will increase access to cheaper and more efficient services, but non-lawyers lack the training to analyze and understand information it puts out. The role of lawyers will change to fill this role, namely utilizing these tools to create a better work product with greater efficiency for their clients

Would You Like that iPhone Locked or Unlocked?: Reconciling Apple's Anticircumvention Measures with the DMCA

When Apple's iPhone first hit the stores it was an epochal media event.2 Apple, long a leader in high-end computers and personal electronics, was poised to make its entry into a highly-competitive market with a new mobile phone that promised groundbreaking technological capabilities in a sleek, ergonomic package. Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, extolled the iPhone's virtues to an eager press, and, shortly thereafter, Apple's stock jumped dramatically.3 Apple's loyal devotees lined up in anticipation days before the phone's June 29, 2007 release.4 It took Apple a mere seventy-four days to sell one million handsets.5 But some time after the fanfare had settled down, public perception of the iPhone shifted. As consumers began to use the iPhone, the once-beloved phone began to acquire its share of discontents. Consumers expressed frustration in response to 300-page phone bills,6 expensive roaming charges,7 and, perhaps most vocally, to the technological methods Apple used to police its exclusive agreement with AT&T

From Lord Coke to Internet Privacy: The Past, Present, and Future of Electronic Contracting

Contract law is applied countless times every day, in every manner of transaction large or small. Rarely are those transactions reflected in an agreement produced by a lawyer; quite the contrary, almost all contracts are concluded by persons with no legal training and often by persons who do not have a great deal of education. In recent years, moreover, technological advances have provided novel methods of creating contracts. Those facts present practitioners of contract law with an interesting conundrum: The law must be sensible and stable if parties are to have confidence in the security of their arrangements; but contract law also must be able to handle changing social and economic circumstances, changes that occur at an ever-increasing speed. Contract law, originally designed to handle agreements reached by persons familiar with one another, evolved over time to solve the problems posed by contract formation that was done at a distance — that is, contract law had developed to handle first paper, then telegraphic, and finally telephonic communications. It has handled those changes very well. In the 1990s, however, things began to change. The rise in computer use by individuals coupled with the advent of the World Wide Web gave rise to two parallel developments, both of which challenged the law of contract formation. Increased computer use created a demand for software programs designed for the consumer market, and those programs were commonly transferred to users by way of standard-form licenses that were packaged with the software and thus unavailable before the consumer paid for the software. Also, parties in large numbers began to use electronic means — the computer — to enter into bargained-for relationships. The turn of the millennium brought two electronic contracting statutes, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (“E-Sign”) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (“UETA”), which removed any doubts that contracts entered into electronically could satisfy the Statute of Frauds. Encouraged by the certainty given by those statutes, internet businesses started offering contract terms on their websites, asking customers to consent to terms by clicking an icon, or by not seeking express assent at all by presenting terms of use by hyperlink. The ease of presenting terms comprised of thousands of words by an internet hyperlink makes it easy for a vendor in its terms of use and terms of service to ask us to give up privacy rights and intellectual property rights. Modern communications technologies therefore make it easier for parties to engage in risky transactions. Nevertheless, we believe that, with few exceptions, the common law of contracts is sufficiently malleable to address the problems arising out of that behavior and where it is not, regulation of contract terms is appropriate. This Article examines those developments

Viral contracts or unenforceable documents? Contractual validity of copyleft licenses

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