Legaltech can bring empathy to life’s hardest situations

The year 2020 has put unimag­in­able strain on people’s lives, liveli­hoods and well­be­ing. For every count in the dai­ly roll call of death, there is a long list of peo­ple who loved and will grieve for a lost life.

Con­fine­ment has act­ed as a pres­sure cook­er for many rela­tion­ships. Cit­i­zens Advice report­ed a surge in divorce guid­ance search­es dur­ing the first lock­down and new data from the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics shows the largest per­cent­age increase in divorce in near­ly 50 years.

Legal ser­vices are increas­ing­ly required to deal with the most emo­tion­al­ly fraught cir­cum­stances by peo­ple des­per­ate to get their affairs in order. There has been a rise in legal­tech plat­forms aim­ing to make sen­si­tive process­es, once con­sid­ered the exclu­sive domain of fam­i­ly or pri­vate client lawyers, more acces­si­ble and cost effec­tive.

Dealing with emotionally-charged issues

Coro­n­avirus caused many peo­ple to think seri­ous­ly about their mor­tal­i­ty per­haps for the first time. Farewill, the UK’s largest will writer, saw a twelve­fold increase in under-35s writ­ing a will at the start of the pan­dem­ic.

“Inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy can mas­sive­ly help with emo­tion­al­ly charged issues,” says Tom Rogers, Farewill’s co-founder and chief prod­uct and tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer. The online ser­vice asks peo­ple to fill out a ques­tion­naire and cre­ates a legal­ly bind­ing will for £90 with­in 15 min­utes, half the aver­age UK cost and a frac­tion of the time typ­i­cal­ly spent on this dif­fi­cult doc­u­ment.

Tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide a safe dis­tance from hav­ing to artic­u­late feel­ings about death and it enables peo­ple to do so in pri­va­cy. Arken.legal, an estate plan­ning soft­ware provider, has also expe­ri­enced increased demand this year. Its soft­ware auto­mates estate plan­ning doc­u­ments, such as wills and last­ing pow­ers of attor­ney, by ask­ing peo­ple to respond to a ques­tion­naire drawn up by pri­vate client solic­i­tors.

March to June was a par­tic­u­lar­ly busy peri­od. Dave Newick, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Arken.legal, says: “Many clients felt help­less in their sit­u­a­tion, but gain­ing peace of mind by organ­is­ing their affairs was some­thing they could con­trol and be reas­sured by.”

Building technology with empathy in mind

Belin­da Par­mar, chief exec­u­tive of The Empa­thy Busi­ness, advis­es on how empa­thy and tech­nol­o­gy can work togeth­er. She says there is con­sid­er­able evi­dence that greater empa­thy leads to increased busi­ness prof­its: “What­ev­er way you cut the num­bers, by pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, growth or earn­ings, empa­thet­ic com­pa­nies earn more mon­ey.” In a con­flict sit­u­a­tion like divorce, Par­mar believes “peo­ple need empa­thy more than ever”.

Ami­ca­ble, a dig­i­tal divorce ser­vice, aims to make the process kinder and more afford­able. It works with cou­ples to help them agree and draft a divorce set­tle­ment that can be tak­en to a fam­i­ly law judge, using a com­bi­na­tion of digi­tised forms, chat­bots and the option of human sup­port to help cou­ples get to that stage.

“The divorce sys­tem is severe­ly out­dat­ed in the UK,” says Pip Wil­son, Amicable’s co-founder. “Many peo­ple believe the only way to sep­a­rate is to hire two divorce lawyers who will rep­re­sent their indi­vid­ual inter­ests.”

At the begin­ning of the year, a High Court judg­ment val­i­dat­ed the rights of the com­pa­ny to pro­vide its ser­vice with­out engag­ing sep­a­rate fam­i­ly lawyers. Mr Jus­tice Mostyn, in his judg­ment, said the future of divorc­ing and sep­a­rat­ing is like­ly to involve tech­nol­o­gy and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI).

A thoughtful user experience

The UK’s tech work­force is only 16 per cent female, yet the major­i­ty of divorces are insti­gat­ed by women. This pos­es ques­tions about who is pro­gram­ming legal­tech AI and how can it pro­vide opti­mal sup­port to peo­ple who are poten­tial­ly very dis­tressed?

Wil­son says: “Our chat­bot under­stands emo­tion­al readi­ness. If a per­son using the chat­bot ser­vice seems unsure about whether they are ready to sep­a­rate, then they will be direct­ed to coun­selling rather than being sold one of our ser­vices.” Tech­nol­o­gy is avail­able around the clock, offer­ing guid­ance dur­ing a time of dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion. “If there are any com­plex ques­tions which need expla­na­tion, the bot will book in a free call with one of our divorce coach­es for more in-depth sup­port,” she says.

Joan­na Good­man, author of Robots in Law: How Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence is Trans­form­ing Legal Ser­vices, says tech­nol­o­gy and automa­tion plat­forms “can­not replace the human side of dis­pute res­o­lu­tion”. What they can, and must, do is cre­ate a “thought­ful user expe­ri­ence”. In the case of chat­bots, this would be a process that links a user to a real per­son, rather than repeat­ing stan­dard respons­es, to make sure sen­si­tive per­son­al issues can be prop­er­ly sup­port­ed and resolved. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in com­plex cas­es.

Dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy varies dras­ti­cal­ly from per­son to per­son and the range of end-users must be con­sid­ered by legal­tech providers. Par­mar says it is cru­cial that any com­pa­ny incor­po­rat­ing chat­bots makes it very clear if you are talk­ing to a human or an algo­rithm. Clients may not imme­di­ate­ly realise a dig­i­tal assis­tant is a pro­gram not a per­son.

When deal­ing with sen­si­tive mat­ters, empa­thy and active lis­ten­ing tech­niques must be repli­cat­ed online, such as emo­tion­al labelling, sum­maris­ing or mir­ror­ing. These could be respons­es like “Just to make sure I’ve under­stood” or open ques­tions like “Is this help­ful?”.

The future of legaltech

Legal­tech intel­li­gence is still in its rel­a­tive infan­cy. Many com­pa­nies have seen the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide smoother legal process­es and use smart ques­tion­naires to auto­mate com­plex, often cost­ly doc­u­men­ta­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly draft­ed by fam­i­ly lawyers, pri­vate client lawyers and estate plan­ners. How­ev­er, the tech­nol­o­gy does not com­pare to the huge­ly advanced AI used by a human-like robot such as Sophia, the world’s first robot cit­i­zen. There is still an essen­tial need for a human expert to inter­pret the law.

As the pub­lic con­tin­ues to turn to online legal ser­vices, one thing is clear: the peo­ple behind legal­tech pro­gram­ming must ensure it reflects the spec­trum of expe­ri­ence of life’s tough­est sit­u­a­tions. Empa­thy and under­stand­ing must con­tin­ue to be built into the heart of fur­ther devel­op­ments.