LISBON ARBITRATION

Much has been said and written in the last couple of years about Artificial Intelligence and its possible impact in the legal practice. Experts seem, however, far from reaching a consensus on the effects that the so-called “next industrial revolution” may have on the legal business. Will lawyers be replaced by robots? What about arbitrators? Are traditional practitioners about to go on their Last Crusade? The term “Artificial Intelligence” is said to have been coined in 1956 when a compute...

1.   Technological Wave Around 20 years ago, Richard Susskind predicted that lawyers would regularly use e-mails to communicate with clients [1] . Time proved him right. Thereafter, 10 years ago, the same author predicted that “the foundations of dispute resolution [would] be rocked by a combination of electronic disclosure, e-filing in the courts” [2] . Once again, time proved him right. He now predicts that new technologies are one of the main drivers of a big transformation in the lega...