AI & Law: Computable Contracts
by Dr. Lance B. Eliot
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Key briefing points about this article:
- Contracts are typically a key element of any legal practice and the work efforts therein
- Computing aids the drafting of legal contracts, albeit somewhat simply so
- Law practices are adopting Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools
- Computable contracts are being advanced via legal scholars and LegalTech vendors
- AI is ultimately an integral component in the future of such contracts
Introduction
Molding clay is an invigorating experience, though it can also have its share of frustration and exasperation.
Perhaps you’ve perchance molded clay, or at least you’ve seen others do so. The idea is that you take a raw lump of clay and gradually knead and mold it into whatever kind of object or shape that you are trying to ultimately produce. When attempting to make a clay bowl, you can use your fingers to try and hollow out a boxy bulk of clay and hone the rest from there. Another means to get that desired bowl to emerge would be to use a spinner and shape the clay as it is being rotated.
Have you ever tried to craft a legal contract?
I’m sure that you replied with a resounding yes.
You’ve likely devised dozens, perhaps hundreds of contracts during your legal career. In a semblance of molding clay, you undoubtedly started with some prior contracts or templates and opted to hone that raw material into the divine contract that you were tasked to create. There are various ways to approach the crafting of a legal contract and we each end up doing so via whatever preferences have been gleaned over the years.
Though some might (still) use paper and pencil, the likelihood is that you used a word processing capability on your computer when composing a contract nowadays. The beauty here is that you can quickly and easily grab passages of…
