A Chat About Chatbots and The Law With Katherine Lowry and Diego Alcala

Using Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing to hold a conversation might seem like a far off idea when it comes to the legal industry, but it is not. We sit down with Baker Hostetler's Katherine Lowry, and Puerto Rico defense attorney Diego Alcala to get a better understanding of how chatbots work, and what value they can bring from legal practices ranging from BigLaw Bankruptcy practice to a solo attorney's criminal law practice. Katherine Lowry won the American Association of Law Libraries' Innovation Tournament in 2018 with her attorney-facing chatbot. In the nearly two years since that recognition, she has created a chatbot for her Bankruptcy practice that answers thousands of potential questions and helps her attorneys find information quickly and frees up her researchers' time for more complex questions. Diego Alcala is working on chatbots which will assist him in his practice by answering basic questions that family members need to know about the clients he is representing. While Diego is not a programmer, he has learned the concept of chatbots through numerous platforms that allow for those with no coding skills to still create powerful chatbots to answer practical questions.  Listen in and see if the ideas shared by Lowry and Alcala spur any ideas of how automating a conversation might help you in your practice. Information Inspirations There's another bill in Congress that creates a FREE PACER! Congressman Hank Johnson, D-GA, is not stopping there. He is also requiring more transparency in the Federal Courts by requiring audio and video recordings are made available of court proceedings. While the bill creates a FREE PACER for most, there is a surcharge for power users who have $25,000 or more in quarterly usage. That means some BigLaw firms will have to pay that surcharge. COVID-19 continues to dominate the conversations (check out our episode). The World Health Organization is testing its messaging to the youth through Tik Tok. It's a novel approach for a novel virus. We are all updating our business plans to prepare for the worst when it comes to COVID-19, but a recent report says that businesses are more likely to suffer from the slow burn of the everyday risks which traditionally bring businesses to their knees. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at [email protected]. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.