Peer to Peer Magazine

40 Speech-to-productivity. Voice assistants excel at rapidly creating documents, memos, letters, and other material instead of typing. While not 100% perfect because of linguistic challenges and software comprehension issues, they are a tremendous improvement upon the dictation and transcription services that lawyers have been using for decades. Older methods of dictation required additional time and processes to produce a final document e.g., secretaries using shorthand required notes to be typed and dictaphones and similar recorders required someone to transcribe and fact-check the document. Voice assistants instantly transform the spoken word into content or data that can be easily shared or stored digitally. In the new, voice-powered work space for legal professionals, a lawyer might be able to walk into a smart office and leverage real-time, secure transcription services for a client meeting or deposition. Revolutionized work and work spaces. As voice assistants improve in performance, they have the potential to change legal work environments. Collaborative groups of attorneys can leverage voice assistants to easily connect with colleagues in other offices (e.g., "Call Linda in the Seattle office") or conduct parallel research while they focus on other related tasks (e.g., "Get me a report on Judge Alsup"). In this way, voice assistants can greatly reduce the amount of time it takes for a lawyer in a smart office to research and find the data he or she needs. They can, of course, be used for more mundane tasks such as reserving conference rooms, ordering supplies, arranging transportation, controlling office environments (e.g., lighting, heating/cooling, etc.) and more. Personalized partners. Voice assistants introduce new levels of personalization into legal work and can even act as an extension of the lawyer. Assistants that employ artificial intelligence will follow lawyers across devices and platforms – even over time – enabling a continuity of work and accomplishing tasks on behalf of the attorney. As A.I. gets more sophisticated, these intelligent voice assistants will be able to verbally answer more complex legal questions or engage in increasingly complex legal discussions. They will be able to communicate with a lawyer's colleagues and opposing counsel on his or her behalf, and even connect to other AI assistants to coordinate schedules. Imagine the day when lawyers will say, "Have your AI assistant call my AI assistant to book a deposition." This technolo can even extend into law schools where students can have digital study partners for personalized learning. With voice assistants able to predict study needs and habits, law students will be more effective while in school and better prepared to practice upon graduation. Overall reduced stress. With an AI assistant to take notes, process data, conduct searches, and produce results, lawyers will be able to work smarter and focus on more high- value tasks, such as legal analysis and client communication. And, with its ability to find and read legal information aloud, attorneys will spend less time reading text. With voice assistants doing some of the heavy-lifting, lawyers should generally feel less pressure and stress. Risks and Challenges Include: Basic security needs. Cyber security is obviously the biggest concern for legal teams using voice technolo – especially if they are connected to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth networks, or if they are required by their clients to maintain their data securely on premises. Voice assistants create massive amounts of data, and if that data isn't properly stored and secured, it increases risk for exposure just like any other unsecured data. Implementing proper cyber security techniques is required to ensure cloud storage is secure, but law firms should be shoring up their on-premises digital storage systems as well. User privacy. Recent concerns about user privacy and the use of voice assistants have garnered quite a bit of media attention. Major news outlets have reported that the creators of voice assistants use human contractors to analyze voice-assistant recordings – purportedly to improve performance. For this reason, some parties may not wish to discuss sensitive legal matters with a connected device present in the room. Law firms have to decide whether the benefits of voice assistants are worth the potential risk of anonymized recordings making their way back to the databases of Amazon and Google – or mistakenly transmitted somewhere else! Imperfect technolo. Voice technolo is still imperfect, so asking voice assistants to conduct complex, multi-step tasks or comprehend nuanced responses can sometimes result in poor outcomes. For example, speech-to-text functionality may require human review to ensure error-free documents. If the device misinterprets or misspells your words, captures and inserts stray conversations, or improperly notates legal citations, the outcome could be embarrassing at best or catastrophic at worst. Legal professionals bear a low tolerance for mistakes, and the first time a voice assistant makes a mistake could be the last time that assistant is used. What's the Future for Voice Technologies in Legal? Despite its imperfections, voice services will improve and continue to have an impact on the legal industry. Here are just a few examples of the future promise that voice technolo holds: • Voice technologies are constantly learning new languages and improving their comprehension of different dialects, accents and pronunciations. This will help remove language barriers and improve communication between attorney and clients in cross-cultural settings, leading to increased access to justice. • Voice biometrics will evolve as a means of multi-factor authentication,

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