With its commitment to Law-STEM initiatives, Northwestern Law is steadily addressing a real gap in the market:  most lawyers are not particularly adept with technology, and most of the folks developing new technologies do not understand much about law and regulation.  As our readers probably realize, the Master of Science in Law program is designed to address this latter deficiency, exposing STEM professionals to issues at the intersection of law, business, and technology, and instilling a set of skills that allow graduates to thrive while working at this intersection.  But what about the first deficiency mentioned above: should legal professionals, many of whom don’t come from a STEM background, care about the development of technology?

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law recently announced a partnership with ROSS Intelligence, the leading provider of artificial intelligence-based research tools. To kick off the partnership, the Law School hosted a Fireside Chat with Andrew Arruda, the CEO and co-founder of ROSS Intelligence.  Arruda explained that lawyers should care a lot about the development of technology, both because that understanding will make them better lawyers, and also because advances in legal technology will have major implications for increasing access to justice in our communities.

A few tidbits from Arruda’s remarks:

• Robots will not replace lawyers. On the contrary, the human element will remain important; people are needed to guide and shape and learn from technological development.
• Legal technology should not be developed in a vacuum; AI will be best developed when everybody is at the table. Partnerships like this new partnership between NU Law and ROSS bring resources together and provide a bridge between different populations who all want to solve the same problems; this will ultimately lead to a better product.
• It is a two-way street – humans affect the development of AI, but humans can also learn from the AI that develops. Arruda used the GO example, where players learned new strategies from the machines that played GO, and then incorporated those machine moves into their own strategies.

Want to learn more about ROSS Intelligence? Watch Andrew Arruda’s TED talk from 2016:

Read more about the NU Law-ROSS partnership on the Northwestern Law News page.