I am pissed off I'm upset because the
majority of people who need a lawyer
can't afford one makes me angry because
I know that in some states like Utah 97%
of defendants and eviction cases show up
to that court without a lawyer
I'm mad I'm mad because of the hundred
million Americans with civil justice
issues 80 million of them go it alone
without legal representation our laws
reflect an idea of equal treatment and
justice for all
but our legal system the ways in which
our laws manifest themselves well it's
got some problems that need to be fixed
I saw that the legal system is stacked
against us both from the outside as a
citizen but also from the inside as a
lawyer first off let me tell you guys
this you need a lawyer period and I know
what you're thinking
well lawyers are expensive but there's
going to come a time in all of our lives
where we have to interact with that
legal system whether it's signing a
contract going through a divorce
getting your will together or assigning
a new employment employment contract
well you might have thought yourself
yeah I'm not going to go get a lawyer
how bad could it be we play this bizarre
game of legal Russian roulette more
often than any of us care to admit but
let me give you a free piece of legal
advice that's a mistake did you know
that in Social Security disability
hearings for example you're 50% more
likely to win when you have a lawyer
but then again even if you do decide to
go out and get a lawyer you're still in
for a bit of trouble the legal system is
constantly changing so they have to
devote a bunch of time to legal research
their fees shoot up and then you hit
that catch-22 you need a lawyer but in
the end there's a good chance that you
can't afford the lawyer you need when I
practice law I can't tell you how many
times people came into my office
confused and looking for help and I had
to tell them you know I needed 25 hours
of time to do research to be able to get
up to speed and best help them the
average consumer lawyer in America bills
out at three hundred and sixty one
dollars an hour legal research takes up
20% of a lawyer's time and so you could
be down nine grand before your lawyers
even had a had a chance to strategize
for you as a first-generation immigrant
at a first-generation university student
I went to law school and got a job at
the law firm in my neighborhood to
represent the people of my community
people with legal needs who couldn't
understand the complexities of our legal
system the needs of the poor and middle
class weren't just things I talked about
in the lecture halls I attended class
and no they were my everyday reality and
so it hurt me deeply to watch as people
stood up walked out of my office and
onto that street to go at it alone but
my life changed and my sense of
frustration changed in September of 2014
and it all started with a telephone call
I just gotten home from spending another
long night at the office when my phone
rang it was my friend Jim ovie ugly
now Jim owes a computer scientist but he
understood the problems with our legal
system because he too had gone through
it first had when jima was a kid
his parents split up and those legal
bills piled up and it was a crippling
crippling force in his household with
his single mom and his sister trying to
make ends meet and do the best they
could me and Jamal had talked about this
before we talked about a whole bunch of
the things we saw as problems in our
legal system but that phone call in
September 2014 wasn't about talking it's
about doing something he asked me if I
wanted to join him and another computer
scientist par glazed olio in building an
artificially intelligent lawyer with the
aim to democratize the law I was in so I
built up the courage walked up to my
parents and said I'm quitting my job and
I joined them we believed that if we
could bring the power of artificial
intelligence to the law our dream of
justice not operating differently
depending on your socioeconomic status
could become a reality if we could make
this work then we could remove one of
the biggest barriers people face when
they try to hire a lawyer legal research
fees see the thing about legal research
is you can't just fire up a search
engine and you know find all the case
president you need lawyers are spending
hundreds of dollars a month for access
to database systems and they type in
keywords and they use boolean connectors
and the process is clunky results come
back in the thousands and so you're
constantly on the hunt for the passages
you need and often time do you read a
whole bunch of cases that are irrelevant
cases that could be 40 pages long and so
it's no surprise that legal research
time really adds up and so we moved into
a basement in Toronto Canada and we
started building the world's first
artificially intelligent lawyer and we
named it Ross using Ross lawyers can
just ask their research questions the
way they appear in natural language as
if they're asking a colleague of theirs
with experience on the matter and Ross
can read over a million pages of law in
a second finding the exact passages they
need and they can find everything they
need in minutes if not seconds
and because Ross is artificially
intelligent it's constantly learning
it's getting smarter every day Ross
doesn't replace lawyers it allows them
to get away from that legal research
task and focus on advising their clients
focusing on doing their job now Ross is
already saving lawyers 20 to 30 hours of
research time in bankruptcy cases which
is the first area we went into so this
means instead of being down that nine
grand for that twenty five hours of
research while that cost has been
eliminated it also means that it doesn't
matter if you have 20 people researching
something or if you have one that
playing field has been leveled because
justice shouldn't have different price
tags more money shouldn't equal better
justice it's ensuring that the most
marginalized in our society are
protected people without a voice like
Billy Jerome Presley who spent 17 months
in a Georgia jail because he couldn't
come up with 2,700 dollars in child
support payments he owed he doesn't have
a lawyer that he could afford to hire he
also didn't get a legal aid lawyer to
help him research and so it is what it
is or 89 year-old Walter Blas who was
evicted from his rent control apartment
that he had called home for 43 years
Walter didn't benefit from having a
lawyer research the law and try to find
something that could have kept him in
his home and off the street legal aid
lawyers are overworked and they have
limited amounts of time to help the
clients that they are able to take on in
fact for every one legal aid case a
legal aid program takes on they have to
reject one these lawyers serving on the
front lines helping the most vulnerable
people in our society while they just
don't have the right resources they
don't have enough resources did you guys
know that there's less than one legal
aid lawyer who can work for
three on civil aid cases for every
10,000 Americans in need one at Ross we
made a pledge that we would give our
technology completely for free to these
lawyers on the frontlines to those
lawyers working pro bono cases to those
lawyers in your neighborhood clinics to
those lawyers at deserving organizations
so we could best help them do their jobs
thank you and so because of artificial
intelligence
I am hopeful I am confident that this
technology will mean that those lawyers
serving on the front lines can get
better results for their clients and
become better lawyers in the process I
am sure that by building a system that
allows lawyers to team up with machines
a world where justice for all isn't just
a catchphrase but a reality for every
single person on earth and so while I
may be pissed off I am happy thank you
you