By Adv. Dr Chinmay Bhosale, Co-founder of NYAI
Needless to say, there is a lot of buzz around the ‘AI’ word in India currently. Yes Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, just like the dot come boom or any other subsequent technology awakening. Having said that, there is a lot of action happening on the most complex of the task that AI can handle, which is the complex legal landscape. Across the globe, there are multiple companies doing a phenomenal job in making sure domain specific solutions around AI capabilities are made practical. Many of these companies already are seeing valuations in multiple billions of dollars. But having said that, and looking at the complex legal ecosystem at our end in India, the question remains: are we solving the right legal problem?
NEED FOR SPEED, REALLY?
The wow factor around the usage of AI obviously most always is the speed. However, its not the quickest of the solutions which are the need of the hour. It’s the most truthful of the lot, which will stand the test of time in such a sensitive area as law. Precision will trump speed. Explainable AI which is traceable, will win this AI race in the long run, and companies which manage to create solutions around this ethos will create the real value.
BIGGEST RISK : NON COMPLAINCE, AND NOT INEFFICIENCY
In India, the greatest legal risk facing businesses today is not inefficiency—it is non-compliance. In a country with endless regulators, legislations which again get divided between central, state and concurrent list – the compliance landscape is overwhelming. To top this, there is tertiary compliance happening at the local level as well. Due to the sheer volume of this compliance landscape, often the manual task of keeping up with compliances gets overwhelming and thus it remains a very error prone endeavour for any company. As a result, businesses in India end up paying thousands of crores in penalties due to faulty compliance. This isn’t due to lack of right legal advice, this is due to lack of real ecosystem which makes compliance mapping easy and manageable. The need of the hour is explainable legal AI, which derisks compliance burden and automates this landscape for them. And this is what is missing, from the legal AI landscape.
Legal intelligence and compliance automation
Compliance first legal intelligence, is what is needed in India’s AI evolution on the legal side. Legal intelligence platforms, which understand the entire hierarchy of the complex web of legal eco system of our country right from municipal level to the central ministry and regulator level, from central lists to concurrent lists, to supreme court to every tribunal and quasi judicial body. Understanding that the minutest circular from a department can cause massive implications on businesses legally, is what is missing from the current legal tech AI evolution of India. What India needs is a solution which understands these complexities, and is made intelligent enough on data across these verticals through pre processed place holders making the interlinking explainable to the machine. What India needs is systems that are designed from the ground up to monitor regulatory obligations in real time, and anticipate compliance risk before it escalates into enforcement action. This will enable a real shift from the present reactive mechanism in legal governance to a more predictive governance, where risks are mapped and mitigated and trust is truly automated.
Journey ahead
Legal AI is here to stay, no doubt. Needless to say, awareness needs to be created around usage of untrained unexplainable AI in such a sensitive world as law. However, trained domain centric solutions are here to stay. One of the fields where AI will make the biggest impact, is infact the legal field. The success of such solutions will however depend on how truthful are they in their output, rather than how swiftly it could whip up an answer which almost always is hallucinated. Also, looking at the complexity of the legal ecosystem in our country, companies who can simplify this complexity by genuine solutions truly stand a chance in making a big contribution in replicating it globally as well. Specially when it comes to compliance automataion, if its effective in India, it can be replicated across the globe. Which product generates the fastest contract won’t be material, but which one generates the most legally compliant one will be. Companies which will help businesses stay compliant and lower their risk, will help determine how the legal AI in India truly shapes.
