As virtual paralegals start work, how long before others stop?
Towards the end of last year we told you to beware of Kim — and we didn’t mean Kardashian.
We were referring instead to an army of virtual paralegals named “Kim”, which stands for “Knowledge, Intelligence, Meaning.” Back then they were poised to storm the barricades of traditional legal practice, and now the future is here: Wirral-based Riverview Law has today rolled out the first two of its Virtual assistants powered by the Kim technology platform.
Karl Chapman, chief executive of Riverview Law, says:
We are delighted to launch these process assistants built on the Kim platform. Our market testing in the UK, US and Canada has proved fascinating and has shown us how big the global market is for these types of cost-effective and easy-to-deploy Virtual Assistants. More will be launched in the coming months, including Advisory and Smart Assistants, as well as different language versions.
What, though, will the “process assistants” actually do?
The headline claim by Riverview is that they will “aid the delivery of legal services.” Beyond that, the clever assistants “provide business users with an easy-to-use gateway to legal support, ensuring that consistent and full instructions are received and that data capture is automated. For the in-house team, they then provide case management, document storage and dashboards that provide actionable business insight.”
There’s more.
The Assistants feature comprehensive reporting. For example, at the click of a button in the In-house Assistant, a user can see how many live cases the legal team is working on, of what work types, which business units the matters have come from, the risk profile of all the cases, which legal team members are working on the matters and how long cases are taking by user and work type.
And tellingly, the assistants will “allow legal leaders to ask the right questions and improve operational efficiency.” They will “help general counsel, heads of legal and legal COOs ensure that the right work is done by the right people, in the right place and at the right price, whether undertaken internally or externally.”
In other words, as if it’s not enough that the assistants will take on a raft of tasks traditionally undertaken by paralegals and, sometimes, trainees in City firms, they’re also very good at telling your boss what you’ve been up to.
Kim today, unemployment tomorrow?