 Well, artificial intelligence has been making significant inroads into various industries, including the legal profession. Its role in the legal field has both transformative potential and notable consequences. Undoubtedly in its positive role, it aids the document review and discovery legal research, predictive analytics, contract analysis, due diligence, legal writing, assistance, and client interaction, and so on and so forth. In other words, I could say that AI can significantly enhance efficiency and productivity. However, it also has some serious consequences such as concerns about job displacement for specific routine tasks, data privacy and security, ethical considerations and so on. Well, to discuss all this and more, we have with us a young but very accomplished guest expert, Abhi Vardhan. Abhi Vardhan is the founder of Indic Pacific Legal Research and the founder chairperson of the Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence and Law. He has led the development of emerging law and policy thinking brands such as Visual, Legal, Analytica and the Bharat Pacific. Abhi Vardhan is a law entrepreneur and is an author, an editor of several books. His first book on technology law, AI, ethics and international law was published in 2019. And he has also authored published handbooks on AI and international law. Abhi Vardhan, welcome to the show, talks that matter. Welcome, welcome to the studio mentor talk. Well, Abhi Vardhan, I would not like to take too much of time talking myself because my research team has gathered many questions for you depending on the time permitting. We would be asking you some very significant questions which are weighing on the mind of the research team as well as my mind. So let me throw first question at you, which is a very basic and fundamental question. But I'm sure many of our viewers would be interested in gathering your answer with regard to that particular question. My first question to you, Abhi Vardhan, is that how is artificial intelligence currently being used in the legal profession to enhance efficiency and accuracy? Abhi Vardhan, my first question to you, Abhi Vardhan, is that how is artificial intelligence currently being used in the legal profession to enhance efficiency and accuracy? Thank you so much. Him and me, first of all, for inviting us to the pleasure to be on your podcast and Abhi Vardhan, I'd be more than happy to discuss about AI and law per se. So when we take your first question, which is about the use of AI in the legal profession, we already see a lot of business-to-business use cases, which is to say that law firms and even startups which have some amazing in-house lawyers, they are actually trying to use Generative AI or any AI for that matter for legal operations, legal management, and document analysis related work. Again, it depends on the component and the size of a company. For example, Alan and Overy would do it because they have a huge client base. A firm like the top nine law firms in India, they would do it because they have a huge base, huge client base. But it depends definitely on the demographics and the requirement and obviously what kind of data are they processing. Because I've been in touch with firms and companies which actually are developing these V2V use cases. I think in legal management, legal ops and document analysis, including contract analysis, we see a lot of AI use cases. And we were then moving on to the second question, which is by and large connected with the first question. We are just trying to stitch up the questions in that format. My second question to you is, how can the legal industry balance the need for human expertise and critical thinking with the efficiency gains brought by AI tools? So when we use any AI related tool or AI oriented tool per se, we obviously need to understand that an AI tool is not going to be an inevitable solution, which is to say that yes, in aspects like document analysis, generative analysis, and sometimes even, so for example, in a recent workshop I had done, I had featured a very interesting AI tool in which I just put any, I don't know, SLP or a contract or a bear act is a PDF file. And I find out that the very AI system itself can interpret and give me a good summarization from any part of the document, be it 100 pages long, 200 pages long. So I think just because it gives you a summarization and can do some analysis, it does not mean it's completely going to change things and remove human autonomy, because human expertise is about those specific aspects of human agency and how legal concepts are used. So I think from an operations and management point of view, I think balancing human expertise, because human agency in the field of law is not going to go anywhere, even if contracts and the systems come in, but there's a lot of scope to simplify generic tasks like document analysis and so forth. I think then I think human expertise is not going anywhere. Yeah, well said. Well, but what do you think are the challenges of implementing AI technologies in let's say law offices, law firms and how can these challenges be overcome in your thought process to ensure successful integration? So I think when it comes to law firms and law related departments and startups and companies and even family businesses, what I see a trend is that they are first of all companies which are going to involve artificial intelligence technologies. So I think like it is the same case with any technology company or any firm using AI, the same applies to law firms, the similar challenges exist. Now what are those challenges? So the challenges obviously include data privacy and consent issues as to what kind of data has been processed and is it not affecting the autonomy of the client? Is it not affecting the client autonomy relationship per se? I hope that these technologies are not going to cause any dent in the credibility of the law firms because they've existed for a long time, at least the top players who are using it. So reputational risk, credibility risk, sometimes even legal risk because you're drafting but at least what aspect of drafting or analysis you're given to the system? How much autonomy do you have in doing that? All of these questions have to be very strictly answered because in the case of AI technology the problem is we don't have any product service classifications in IP law or commercial law properly anywhere in the world. The United States tried to do so, India is also trying to maybe in future but it has not happened yet properly anywhere, not even in China for that matter. So I think these are the challenges I would give an example. And obviously you know another significant challenge on which you have spoken elsewhere and even written articles and perhaps even in your books you have mentioned about those aspects. And that is how does one address the challenge relating to data privacy and security concerns impact with the use of AI tools in legal practice? And according to you are there any measures to mitigate these risks? So we already know that the Data Protection Act the PDP has already come up to the public, it's now implemented, the president has given the assent. Now if you look at the basic aspects of legitimate use of data and even the data protection rights from section 11 to 14, we see a thing that while I actually talked about the client-autonomy relationship and it comes to using confidential data because this is not like a B2C case where you have chat GPT and you are just prompting in public and chat GPT says oh you know what it's a free research review. That's not happening in this case, it's a business to business use cases. So the licensing and the use of such proprietary information if necessary or something which is generated out of not something which is given in an updated database but something which is already in the database for a long time. I think obviously is pseudonymization of data matters, what kind of sensitive data are you taking, what kind of personal data are you integrating but at the same time the kind of metadata and non-personal data which is being used, I think that's exactly where companies and law firms need to be aware about as to how are they processing it and the more they do ethically I think they can because it's not going to happen very soon for law firms but definitely at an ancillary level it will happen and for example the data protection law, it's very clear in the data protection act that there will be certain obligations in the legal system which will be superseding the data protection law. For example in the case of the fintech industry or the health tech industry or maybe even the ed tech industry if necessary. So I think if there are superseding obligations then I think in that case one needs to be aware about as far as law firms and companies are concerned. If I was to compare this whole concept of and reality rather of AI with OTT for instance, OTT went through its own self administration, self regulatory regime and then it was found not to be enough and then the government stepped in and tried to work out some regulatory framework and the process is still on. Now do you think that the regulatory bodies and professional organizations relating to lawyers and legal fraternity can play some significant role or relevant role in establishing guidelines for the responsible and ethical use of AI in the legal profession? Yeah so a very interesting question. So to take it I think self regulatory approaches is the best way for a market to grow because again these are not business to customer cases yet but I have seen instances of some Indian law firms very few not many actually doing this that for example you have this chat GPT kind of an application which is like you're prompting and asking questions on legal issues. I know certain companies already trying to implement those solutions some of them were featured in a workshop which I had held some time back. So I think what I see is that self regulatory approaches is a good way to go forward but I think on legal management and legal operations are much better way and we can learn this from the competition commission of India. For example for cab aggregators like Uber, Ola, Rapido and others the government of India through its statutory body the competition commission just delivered some self regulatory guidelines on what kind of fees are you showing it to your customer who's booking your ride. So I think from a form of business to business point of view the bar council of India maybe relevant bodies can actually at least issue certain kinds of basic touch up guidelines that you know what this is exactly what you need to at least try to ferment as a template that try to make it more inclusive so that the customer who's your client obviously in the legal profession we don't say customer they are actually you know aware of what they're doing with you and what kind of data you're using. So I think then that way the bar council can take the initiative and then the ministry of law and justice and even Metis would come in to be and maybe even our courts would act upon but I think let's start with the bar councils and because they registered the law firm staff. Very valid remark on that. Finally you know I mean we on to the last question and I'm sure we'll have another round of episode because we haven't exhausted all our questions but you know we are nearing the closing time but the final question is also very relevant because we had we got quite a few you know comments and questions with regard to this particular episode and one question which came from every direction was that what are the potential career opportunities for lawyers in a future where artificial intelligence is prevalent in the legal field? So there are two kinds of opportunities. First obviously is in traditional fields like telecom and technology law which we know you know we call as TMT law entertainment law all of these fields intellectual property law I mean in these I mean from a substantive and procedural law perspective I don't think jobs are going to go away or opportunities are going to go away but in the case of you know a non-field perspective I really see that lawyers and law professionals who are efficient and at least aware that they're using the right tool to make their tasks better at a mass scale for example I don't know under the digital India initiative it turns out and I think it's being done with state legal services authorities in a Marshall Pradesh there was a very interesting case study of legal aid so if it is being tried that lawyers who are at a district court level or a civil court level they start using some basic AI applications which are available for free under the digital India initiative and turns out that they're using it to make their tasks improve I think we as Indians are pretty much good at that I think using those AI tools which are credible enough which are helpful enough in translation document analysis contract analysis legal management for clients and others I think if it is used at a granular level which is I would say at a mass level you know available to lawyers across the board I think that would create a lot of career opportunities and also make lawyers a lot of efficient people you know thereby obviously increasing the credibility of the legal system the judiciary overall so I think that would be great for you know India systems I think the I think that's how career opportunities should be looked into first is obviously substantive field based and second is obviously efficiency and professional work based that's what I understand thank you well in conclusion I will close with a remark that AI's role in the legal profession offers numerous benefits in terms of efficiency accuracy and accessibility to legal services however it also presents its own challenges related to ethics bias and the changing nature of legal work now balancing these aspects will be crucial as the legal profession continues to adopt and adapt to AI technologies as Abhi Vardhan mentioned well thanks so much Abhi Vardhan for joining in and sharing your expert views a big thanks to all the audiences and and and viewers for watching and and sending in their comments all the time really appreciate it see you next time with another interesting topic thank you so much bye for now