Commercial reality may dampen our bold vision of a future populated by robot lawyers, recent events indicate.
The government has shelved plans for a digital court in the run-up to the General Election. Meanwhile, a Netherlands project for a digital family law service, Rechtwijzer 2.0, has suffered a serious setback. Writing in NLJ this week, Steve Hynes, director, Legal Action Group, says Rechtwijzer 2.0 ‘looks like it is coming to an ignominious end’. The Dutch organisation behind it is withdrawing the product in July as it is not making enough money.
Hynes says the Dutch experience ‘shows that good quality digital advice products are expensive to develop, maintain and, perhaps most importantly, derive revenue from. It would also seem that it is difficult to persuade the public in large numbers to use them, unless they are supported by traditional legal advice services. This would suggest we are some way off seeing lawyers replaced by robots.’
