Prof Emilios Avgouleas speaks at International Conference of Legal Regulators 2019

Professor Emilios Avgouleas spoke in the keynote panel of the International Conference of Legal Regulators 2019 (ICLR), hosted by the Scottish Law Society in Edinburgh on 5 & 6 September.

Forming a panel with Anna Bradley, President of the Scottish Law Society and Chairperson of the Solicitors' Regulatory Authority (SRA), and Alison Hook, former head of the English Law Society's International Section, Prof Avgouleas spoke about parallels between the data revolution in the financial sector (Fintech) and developments that are ongoing in the legal services sector (Lawtech), linking up the Techlaw Fest conference in Singapore, Asia's biggest fintech and lawtech conference, where he spoke about parallels for professional liability and regulation by comparing for example financial robo-advisors with legal advice platforms.

He concluded his ICLR talk with a note of caution, explaining that:

"law is all about information (fact finding/evidence), information processing (evidence evaluation) judgement and to some extent predictability so-called stare decisis or precedent. So in my view AI can be used to, first, process massive amounts of evidence and second to, some extent, predict outcomes and probably behaviours, for instance in connection with a detention decision. But as regards the third element judgement the human agent cannot and won’t be replaced for a long time due to algorithms’ lack of resilience when it comes to noise/distraction or inability to pause and reflect even if one day lawyers and courts use advance forms of AI like deep learning neural networks."

The conference brought together legal regulators from 60 countries to address the main theme of legal technology.