Contract analysis: Difference between revisions

Contract analysis (view source)

Revision as of 08:54, 8 October 2020

588 bytes added , 8 October 2020

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

82,891

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{a|devil|
 [[File:Zen.jpg|450px|thumb|center|Sir! Sir! I've found an [[indemnity]]!]]
-}}Luminaries, [[thought leader]]s and [[digital prophet]]s will tell you that machines can now read and annotate contracts, such that yon poor [[legal eagles]] are no longer needed and will shortly be [[technological unemployment|looking for work as pleasure droids or something]]. Quoth a such digital prophet:
+}}Luminaries, [[thought leader]]s and [[digital prophet]]s will tell you that machines can now read and annotate contracts, such that yon poor [[legal eagles]] are no longer needed and will shortly hacve no choice but to work as [[technological unemployment|pleasure droids]] for our transistor-based overlords. Quoth one such [[digital prophet]]:
-:''Besides manipulating the physical world, machines are also increasingly encroaching on tasks that, until now, have required a human ability to think and reason. In the legal sphere for example J. P. Morgan has developed a system that reviews commercial loan agreements, it does in a few seconds it does what would have required, they estimate, about 360,000 hours of human lawyer time.''
+:''... machines are also increasingly encroaching on tasks that, until now, have required a human ability to think and reason. In the legal sphere, for example, J. P. Morgan has developed a system that reviews commercial [[loan|loan agreements]], it does in a few seconds what would have required, they estimate, about 360,000 hours of human lawyer time.''
 ::— {{author|Daniel Susskind}}, {{br|A World Without Work}}
-Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Preternaturally intelligent silicon minds scanning and processing gigabytes of diverse text in an instant and analysing it for all material quirks and issues, like Zen from ''Blake’s Seven''. [[Get your coat]], [[legal eagles]].
+''Three hundred and sixty thousand hours of professional work carried out in seconds''. Sounds — literally — incredible, doesn’t it? Preternaturally intelligent silicon minds scanning and processing gigabytes of diverse text in an instant and analysing it for all material quirks and issues, like Zen from ''Blake’s Seven''. [[Get your coat]], [[legal eagles]].
-===Data extraction tools===
+===Contract analysis or data extraction?===
-But let’s just stop and consider what is actually going on here. J.P. Morgan reviewing, presumably tens and probably ''hundreds'' of thousands of commercial loans (I am allowing JPM’s [[legal eagles]], for whom I have great respect, ten hours to review each loan.)
+But let’s just stop and consider what is actually going on here: a  bank seeking to reviewing tens and probably ''hundreds'' of thousands of ''its own'' commercial loans. These loans will be rendered in the hideous, overwrought prose of the banking lawyer, to be sure, but — even allowing for template variations and [[Legal evolution|evolution]] (by which I mean periodic [[Cambrian explosion]]s  of [[flannel|flannelry]] — to which not even the House of Morgan is immune), ''the contracts will all be basically the same''. There will be a predictable, schedule of customer details and economic variables — dates, amounts, currencies, rates, and optional elections — but the ''legal terms'', though gruesomely articulated, will be homogeneous, and in any case within the bank’s control: a commercial bank won’t allow clients to wordsmith its standard terms. And if it does, then ''that'' is the problem to be solved, not how can I possibly understand all these varied terms I have agreed with hundreds of thousands of small-to-medium-sized clients? Yet another example of the [[technology paradox]]. Technology that encourages you to ''ignore'' the [[root cause]] of your problems is ''bad'' technology.
-These loans will be rendered in the hideous, overwrought prose of the banking lawyer, to be sure, but — even allowing for template variations and evolution (by which I mean periodic [[Cambrian explosion]]s  of flannelry — to which not even the House of Morgan is immune), ''the contracts will all be basically the same''. There will be a predictable, schedule of customer details and economic variables — dates, amounts, currencies, rates, and optional elections — but the ''legal terms'' will be homogeneous.
+So, “reviewing one hundred thousand commercial loan agreements” really means processing one hundred thousand tables of variables. This, doubtless, would take an ''aeon'' if assigned to a battalion of [[legal eagles]], and would in the process ''drive each of the poor buggers up the wall'', but to be clear it would require ''absolutely no judgement, let alone legal acumen''. It is a matter of transcription.
-So, “reviewing one hundred thousand commercial loan agreements” really means processing one hundred thousand tables of variables. This, doubtless, would take an ''aeon'' if assigned to a battalion of [[legal eagles]], and would in the process ''drive each of the poor saps up the wall'', but to be clear it would require ''absolutely no judgement, let alone legal acumen''. It is a matter of transcription.
+Assigning a ''lawyer'' to this task would, in any era, have been an act of cruel & unusual punishment, not to mention economic folly. It is not news that [[difference engine]]s can process information better than [[meatware]]. JP Morgan’s sensible use of information processing power is hardly the proverbial [[Apocalypse|horseman on the lawyer’s ridge]].
-Assigning a ''lawyer'' to this task would, in any era, have been an act of cruel & unusual punishment, not to mention economic folly. It is not news that [[difference engine]]s can process information better than [[meatware]]. JP Morgan’s sensible use of information processing power is hardly a horseman on the lawyer’s ridge.
 ===Contract review tools===