Legal Services Get a Fresh New Option with Ailira

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Summary: A new robotic approach to legal services is making many services more affordable and more streamlined.

Legal services do not come cheap. There are overhead costs, transportation, a law degree, and numerous other expenses that go into practicing law, raising the costs so that many cannot afford legal services. One company is trying to change this by streamlining the workflow of legal work that typically paralegals and assistants handle.

  

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Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Research Assistant or Ailira announced on November 13 their new “Law Firm Without Lawyers” service, as reported by Law.com. The service will attempt to turn legal services that would be costly into a lower cost option for consumers.

Ailira promotes “lawyer-free” legal services through AI technology by working as a type of chatbox where users can provide their information, answer a couple questions, and then receive documents relevant to their legal matters. Some of the services the “Law Firm Without Lawyers” provides are drafting and services, assistance with asset protection, and help with the legal process of structuring a business.

Currently, the service operates out of a shopping complex in northern Australia. Users can sit at a computer to answer a few questions for the software, which then kicks out a will. One user told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the service was “really easy.” He had to enter some “basic details” and then the bot “does the whole thing for you.”

Ailira developer Adrian Cartland, who is a tax lawyer, explained that “all legal information” is free. Users are charged for documents. He said the fee for a “simple will, trust deed or company incorporation” is AU$150. Users can also opt to talk with a real lawyer, have them review the documents, or provide additional legal advice for a cost.

Cartland and his developers created Ailira in 2016 to help with tax law research and to research the private files of a law firm. Last December, they offered the service to law firms for AU$90 a month. The company also received support from the Australian government to develop a service that could help domestic violence victims with legal advice. This version has not yet been released.

Cartland said, “The consumer chatbot aspect of Ailira is providing legal services to people who would otherwise be priced out of the market. That is, this is an entirely new market. As we know from microeconomics, a decrease in price leads to an increase in quantity demanded. Therefore the future of law is a massive expansion of the legal market.”

Ailira is not the first company to offer this kind of service. Stanford University student Josh Browder released DoNotPay this year to help those fighting parking tickets. His company has since expanded into other practice areas. Students are the University of Cambridge developed Lawbot, a service which gives preliminary assessments to crimes victims in the U.K.

Much of the work these types of AI legal technology services do is what legal assistants and paralegals are tasked with handling. However, Cartland noted that his “Law Firm Without Lawyers” is using “three new law graduates to service a practice that didn’t previously exist. This will be replicated by myself and others over the coming years, and so there is a very bright future for the law.”

Do you think AI can do the job that paralegals and assistants do? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

To learn more about advances in AI technology in the legal industry, read these articles:

• Stanford Student’s “Robot Lawyer” Fights Parking Tickets in Seattle
• Robots LISA and Billy Provide Affordable Legal Assistance in the U.K.
• Technology Continues Changing the Legal Industry

Photo: allstartups.info