Next year the Buys legal firm will introduce robotic rivals to its human staff. The company is developing 3 robots, Stacy, Dave and Nathan, to provide online legal opinions and advice to its customers.

The robots will initially be used to answer basic questions from the public and to present electronic training material.

According to AI Expert Systems at the University of Texas, AI will let computers autonomously reason with the law to draw legal conclusions.

The head of that team, Selmer Bringsjord, says: “Our intuition is that people won’t mind in the least if their lawyers are empowered by artificial colleagues — quite the contrary, if they are the beneficiaries of quicker turnaround time, lower legal fees and higher quality work.

“If the case is won, if the deal is done, complaints will be few and far between.�

Via Business Day.