Introduction

With the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), personalized medicine will finally be a reality with AI helping to tackle the vast amount of patient data collected and analyzed from sequencing a patient genome. AI will be used to identify patterns within the high volume of genetic data sets, allowing for the prediction of a patient’s probability of developing certain diseases or assisting physicians with designing potential therapies. AI will be used to help physicians predict how tumors will evolve following treatment, allowing physicians to change the course of treatment if the tumor develops a resistance. AI could be used as a predictive prognostic tool to develop links between DNA mutations and known outcomes. Early detection of certain troubling genes could allow physicians to use CRISPR for gene editing of the target sequence.

 

AI for the detection of Cancer

Studies done on the error rates of cancer diagnosis has found that as much as 1 in 4 suffers from inadequate physical examinations and incomplete diagnostic tests. AI will fix this! AI will soon be able to be linked to tools that are able to analyze compounds in the human breath, detecting illnesses like cancer. AI tools have been and will continue to be trained with data from patients with various types of cancers. Cancers produce a distinctive smell of volatile organic compounds. AI will one day be able to decipher through normal chemical compounds in breath samples to identify those being emitted by the tumor. AI detection tools will not be used to replace physicians, but rather it will function as a supportive tool to help confirm their conclusions. The AI tool will be able to take minutes to autonomously analyze a breath sample that traditionally takes physicians hours to analyze.

 

AI for predicting stable dose treatments

In many diseases like cancer, there is a very narrow window in which a therapeutic agent will prove to be effective. Insufficient dosing or targeting is often associated with higher rates of toxicities or metastasis.  Therefore, there is an increasing need to develop strategies for determining appropriate doses and dosing windows. There are many factors that affect the pharmacokinetics of detecting an appropriate dose or dosing window including ethnicity, age, gender, concomitant medication, and weight. AI could be used to investigate the clinical and genetic factors significantly associated with the appropriate dosing and timing.

 

\Empowering, the patient

 AI in combination with blockchain and the Internet of Things will help patients to play a more active role in their health. Patients will soon have their records stored on a single platform for all of their doctors to access when diagnosing and prescribing medication. Patients will soon be able to leverage IoT tools to help monitor their glucose levels and heart rates, allowing for patients to respond to potential issues earlier. By having the power in their fingertips, patients can obtain reliable second and third opinions by granting access to all of their medical records in Realtime.

 

 

Conclusion

              There is a fear that AI will soon take over the world, displacing humans in the market place. This fear is becoming warranted with the emergence of self-driving cars, shopping cart recommendations, and manufacturing robots. It is further supported by the fact that machines are projected to replace 800 million jobs by 2030. Though these may come true, I think that AI will not replace humans but will rather become a mere tool for our use. As I’ve discussed, I think that AI will help transform the way we approach human. AI will allow us to identify potential diseases by analyzing the human genome. Early detection is critical and helps prevent patients from dying from diseases that are curable in its early stages, using gene editing tools.  It will also allow doctors to develop personalized solutions for conditions like cancer. We know that each human body is different and requires different approaches for each human being. AI will change the way we assist human beings.

 

Do the words #blockchain, #cryptocurrency, and #smartcontracts make your brain shut down? If so, take a look at the blockchain primer for lawyers that Karen Suber and I just penned – it’s all about the basics of blockchain, current and potential applications and their impact on the legal profession. Read on “A Blockchain Primer for Lawyers” https://lnkd.in/ejVSUwE American Council for Technology – Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) American Council for Technology – Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) Caitlin (Cat) Moon, MA JD CoinDesk DLx Law LLP NCSL International Department of Commerce Pavel Kravchenko, PhD TRON Foundation #WorldEconomicForum #TsuiNg

 

Link Below:

https://lnkd.in/ejVSUwE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traditional Contracts and their Pain Points

“Business does not stand still, however traditional contracts do.” Professor Shadab explained that businesses need dynamic contracts that can be updated in real time. Businesses are in need of contracts that integrate with the business world and are constantly evolving. He explained that the goal of clause is to help develop open-source standards to help move dynamic smart contracts forward. Dynamic contracts (legal smart contracts) would allow for contract terms and conditions to be adjustable over time based on the current business condition. Parties would be able to monitor price changes, discounts, shipping status in a dashboard as they occur.  The price of aluminum fluctuates with demand and supply in the market, this would be of use to have automatically updated in the contract without having both parties guess its potential value for the contracting period. These dynamic contracts would monitor performance and compare the performance against the terms of the contract.

 

Integrating APIs and IOT in Dynamic Contracts

It is projected that there will be more than 20 billion connected devices in the next several years, from traffic lights to autonomous coffee makers. Corporations, like Amazon, are taking the stance that data collection is an invaluable asset and have taken steps to collect more, learn from it, and make modifications that increases profit/knowledge.

An API is a program that allows various products or services the ability to talk to other products or services. APIs allow for individuals or corporations to leverage their data by opening it up to other corporations. This allows for partners/consumers of the corporation’s firewall the ability to access its data. APIs that are incorporated into a contract has the ability to facilitate communication between smart contracts and the cloud.

An example would be a dynamic contract that is developed between a farmer of hay and a farmer of horses, which states that the horse farmer will purchase hay from the hay farmer if the rainfall does not exceed 4 inches that summer. The dynamic contract would pull data via the weather station’s API to monitor the amount of rainfall. If the rainfall remains below the 4-inch requirement then the smart contract will be automatically executed, whereas if it exceeds the requirement the smart contract will not proceed. The hay farmer could also incorporate IoT sensors in the ground to give a more accurate rate of rainfall, and have the information feedback into the dynamic contract. The horse farmer will be notified to allow for him/her to decide if 4 and a half inches is acceptable for executing the contract.

The importance of social media for a  business entity is becoming a critical part of how a corporation markets and connects with its consumers. With much of America’s citizens joining and using social media sites regularly, the social media industry is becoming a larger part of our lives. In fact, over 2 million corporations are using Facebook for promoting their products and services. Corporations have found that the use of social media allows for it to lower ad costs, reach its target audience, and analyze the effectiveness of its ad campaign. Though 61% of Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on social media at all, there is a smaller subset of CEOs that are using their private accounts to build a brand for themselves and their companies. This has to lead to free PR for their company, with one such example being T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere.

 

But what happens when the CEO goes too far and crimples the business?

 

This is exactly what happened to Telsa. Its CEO, Elon Musk, has become a celebrity on Twitter with over 22 million followers. Musk has become one of the most influential CEOs on the platform. Musk has used the platform to display his self-expression and is often guilty of oversharing. An example of his oversharing was displayed in the following tweet:  

His tweet about taking the company private and having funding secured triggered the SEC to investigate his claims. The SEC was worried that his tweets might lead to market manipulation. In fact, the stocks soared by 11 percent. A week after the tweets, the SEC subpoena-ing Telsa about Musk’s statements. The SEC found that Musk nor Telsa had lined up the necessary financing aside from preliminary talks with investors. The Board of Telsa has requested for Musk to leave twitter during the investigation.

 

The SEC Deal

 

The SEC sued Musk for his statements of taking the company private. The SEC found that his statements about securing the funding to offer shareholders $420 per share, misleading. The SEC and Telsa settled the lawsuit for $40 million and required for Musk to step down from his chairman position. This marks the first time the SEC has reacted to social media post and online communications and is likely to not be its last.

 

It is important to have the ability to improve one’s community. But it is just as important to retain the ability to reside in that community after the improvement have been made.

 

Civic Beautification Efforts

 

Imagine using local resources to empower those who reside in disinvested communities through crowdsourcing. Imagine affording local residents the ability to contribute to the restoration of their communities without gentrification. Crowdfunding can allow residents to turn creative, sustainable projects into a reality. Communities seeking to do restoration projects that do not have an economical return could use platforms like ioby or Citizinvestor.com, crowdfunding platforms that help residents raise money for public projects. Platforms like Citizinvestor.com also allow for residents to partner with the city to conduct joint projects. In communities that have had years of disinvestment, the government and community coalitions will need to create ways to restore public confidence to help win investors trust.

 

Economic Improvement Efforts

Crowdsourcing in such a community could function by allowing the residents to contribute their nominal funds to other residents’ nominal funds to create an investment fund. Each resident, based on their contribution, would have a certain percentage of ownership in the overall venture. These funds could be used to help create local groceries with actual fresh produce, community centers or programs for the youth, employment for local residents, and beautification initiatives. Ownership could be maintained on a private or public blockchain, which is considered to be immutable, depending on the needs of the group. Immutability can help build trust amongst those looking to invest in the projects of the community.

 

Cease and Desist Letter Automation

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Introduction:

On Friday, April 20th LegalRnD will host the “Measuring Lawyer Quality and Setting an Empirical Research Agenda for Legal Technology and Innovation” Conference from 9 am to 12 pm at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing. Students from Dan Linna Jr.’s Litigation: Data, Theory, Practice, Process Course will present on legal technology tools that have been developed to address real-world problems provided by project partners. Students were taught the Kata method to help identify potential solutions for the legal problems that they were provided.

Students were also trained in both Think Smart and Neota Logic artificial intelligence platforms, so that these solutions could be built for the project partner.  My group consisted of Erica Porter, Kaitlyn Huber and myself. We were given the following problem by Jeffrey Sharer of the Akerman Law Firm .

Industry
Law and Intellectual Property

Primary Business
Protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. Intellectual Property involves intangible assets and creative works. It secures and enforces legal rights to inventions, designs, and artistic works.

The Challenge

Intellectual property rights are one of the most valuable assets of a corporation. In fact, it may be the most important asset the corporation possesses and therefore should be protected. In a recent survey, C-Level executives were asked whether they considered trademark infringement as something that they monitor in the company. Over 80% of these executives state that trademark infringements have become a growing issue for corporations over the past 5 years.

There are a number of ways in which a trademark infringement can damage a company’s brand, resulting in loss of sales. One of the growing concerns for C-Level executives is the negative publicity that a brand may sustain on social media. This makes the response of a corporation and its legal team time sensitive. Traditionally, it takes an in-house lawyer or outside IP counsel approximately 2 to 4 hours to assess a potentially infringing mark and draft and appropriate cease and desist letter or other correspondence to the alleged infringer. For many large organizations, this can add up to hundreds or even thousands of hours per year. One Deputy General Counsel responsible for IP at a Fortune 100 company suggested that this process could be at least partially automated to allow for responses to be generated more quickly

The Solution

Law firms like Akerman, which build smart systems, are uniquely positioned to respond to this issue. Attorney Jeffrey Sharer and Professor Dan Linna Jr. decided to have a group in Dan’s Litigation Class develop a solution using Think Smart or Neota Logic to streamline the researching and drafting of a cease and desist letter. My group decided to use the Neota Logic artificial intelligence software platform to help clients determine their rights under Trademark law. The Neota Logic platform employs process management, document automation, and reasoning to build an intelligent application for addressing complex legal issues.A client using the system can draft a cease and desist letter in 15 to 20 minutes rather than the traditional 2 to 4 hours. This allows for the client’s IP counsel to address other issues for the corporation, rather than spending valuable time on the cease and desist process.

How it Works: Programming Neota with Actions, Variables, Question Flows, and Decision Trees:

When determining the best app to develop for clients, we discussed developing an app that would allow the client’s IP counsel to generate an automated cease and desist PDF, but decided that our app would be of better use if it empowered anyone on the legal team to determine the companies’ rights under Trademark law and drafts the cease and desist letter for them. The software’s functioning is similar to TurboTax in that regard, where you can file taxes without having to be a CPA. With seamless integration, Neota Logic opens the web interface of the Advisor where the user selects the appropriate template for the document type.

The Advisor starts automatically, prompting the user for a case number or other identifying information. The Advisor provides a link to the USPTO if the IP counsel needs to retrieve related data about the company’s trademark and prompts the user to fill in the remaining information required for the document type.

The Advisor generates the document using the template, merging the data obtained in the questionnaire, and from common content, and applying trademark rules as required.
The solution then routes the generated document automatically to the clients’ email.

The Draft Letter:

Results and achievements of this project:

  1. With automated document templates, the time spent by the legal department on drafting cease and desist letters is reduced by more than 80%!
  2. Automated templates significantly reduce mistakes in documents.

User Input

We strived to make the best app possible, so we wanted to make sure that we were able to incorporate input from those in the field and those in general practice. We wanted to make sure that our app has the content that a trademark attorney would need to feel empowered to continue using it, but we also wanted Akerman to be able to provide it to in-house counsel who does not work on trademarks as often. Jordan Galvin was incredible, as she was willing to go through our app and provide comments to help us make our app amazing. By incorporating user input, we were able to draft the questions so that all audiences could follow through and submit information for the letter. Martin Childs, a 2L working for a Chicago firm, stated that he wished he had taken this class because he felt that developing these tools directly address clients’ pain points. Professor Bean said he was impressed with our app and felt that it was very useful. Professor Carter Johnson, who worked in IP at a firm and now teaches IP at MSU, stated that our app was very interesting and a great start to an awesome idea.

What We Learned:
In creating this automated artificial intelligence software platform, we learned that you cannot simply throw technology at an issue. We opened the course by learning to implement the Kata method, which forced us not to jump to a conclusion but rather to employ the scientific method. We were forced to test our theories to determine if they were accurate. We employed process improvement and process mapping to eliminate waste, by using the data-driven approach to develop our system.

This innovative system was created through teamwork with my classmates and with our project partner, Jeffrey Sharer. We learned that in this era of Artificial Intelligence, the legal field could be significantly improved through the automation of data, leading to more efficient service delivery and improved client satisfaction.

Below is an abstract/summary of my paper with the Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship and the Law at Pepperdine Law School.

Motivated by the recent explosion of interest in artificial intelligence(AI), I examined whether it makes sense to implement AI in smart contracts, to make them more effective. The current state of smart contracts leaves one to wonder if these are true contracts themselves. Traditional contracts have an offer for acceptance, highlighting the fact that smart contracts are mere codes incapable of satisfying the required elements of a legal contract. Could smarter contracts, assisted by AI, satisfy the elements of a contract by offering a web-based platform that allows for parties to make offers and accept them, copying them into a smarter contract? Could the use of AI in contracting, reduce risk by comparing the current smarter contract with existing smarter contracts on the blockchain? Could AI help retain business relationships by allowing user inputs that track performance, fluctuations, and extending the time for performance?

These analyses will be the focus of this paper. Part I examines the issues with the current state of contracting and will elucidate potential sectors of the legal industry where the implementation of smart contracts would be of best use for attorneys and our clients. Part II examines the implementation of smart contracts, and how it would help attorneys add value to clients by making attorneys work more effectively and efficiently. Part III of this paper will also explain why the use of smart contracts should be augmented with artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with the validity of the contracts. Part IV of this paper will examine the creation of a new type of lawyer that technologists and corporate clients will need to assist with the understanding of the risk associated with the technology and the laws that govern them. Finally, in Part V this paper will examine potential client areas that could benefit from the use of smart contracts to save money and move more efficiently.

 

On March 30th, Houman B. Shadab, a founder of the Accord Project and professor of law at New York Law School, will lead a workshop at the University of Michigan Law School about blockchains, smart contracts, and the Accord Project. Professor Shadab is a prolific and influential expert at the intersection of law, business, and technology. His research focuses on financial technology, smart contracts, hedge funds, derivatives, commercial transactions, and blockchains. The workshop is a supplement to the “Legal Technology & Innovation” course taught at Michigan Law School by Professor Dan Linna. Students and members of the public may attend if they RSVP through the Detroit Legal Innovation Meetup.

Blockchain has recently emerged as a disruptive technology that may revolutionize the way that attorneys will advise their clients. Applications for blockchain are currently being developed for key industries including finance, insurance, energy, healthcare and legal. A blockchain is a decentralized, trustless and continuously growing ledger that records and keeps track of every transaction across a peer-to-peer network of participants.

Recently, PWC made the news not only for launching a law firm in Washington D.C., but also for the release of its blockchain platform. The platform will help with managing business disputes and auditing of current implementations of blockchain applications by various corporations like Walmart, which is introducing a blockchain

application for improving food tracking. Blockchain appeals to corporate clients because the technology promises to provide security by design. Blockchain security comes from leveraging cryptographic protocols and distributed consensus algorithms, which provide anonymity, auditability and transaction immutability.

These same characteristics have also made blockchain appealing to lawyers and corporate clients for its potential use in “smart contracts”. The term “smart contracts” was originally coined by Nick Szabo, a cryptographer, who first saw the potential of 

automating contracts on blockchains. Szabo described contracts as a set of promises agreed to by a meeting of the minds, precisely as taught in my first-year contracts class by Professor Barnhizer. Szabo envisioned an automated contract that could be triggered by performance of either party to the agreement. The parties are not required to have a prior business relationship, and this structure allows for automated remedies if either side does not perform according to the terms of the agreement.

The original contract would be translated into code by blockchain trained attorneys representing either side. The code would contain a series of if-then statements that would carry out the completion of the contract once a condition is met. In summary, the term “smart contracts” refers to computer transaction protocols that execute the terms of a contract automatically based on a set of conditions. The use of smart contracts by corporate clients raises a number legal issues that will require advising by future and current attorneys.

The Accord project is a working group, made up of lawyers and organizations, that is focused on developing best practices and legal standards for smart contracts. The Accord project is led by the internet of things-enabled contract startup Clause, which was co-founded by Mr. Shadab. Mr. Shadab believes that having the Accord Project set standards for smart contracts will increase the chances that smart contracts will be implemented properly.

 

Come learn about blockchain and smart contracts with us.


All Students and Practitioners are Welcome! Please RSVP via the Detroit Legal Innovation Meetup.

 

Location:
University of Michigan Law School
Hutchins Hall Room 116

March 30th’s Agenda:
9-9:05 – Introductions
9:05-9:15 – Introduction to Clause and the Accord Project
9:15-10:00 – Introduction to Blockchain & Bitcoin
10:00-10:30 – Interactive Exercise
10:30-11:00 – Introduction to Smart contracts
11:00-12:30 – Smart legal contracts workshop
12:30-1pm – Roundtable discussion and wrap up
1pm – Closing and Networking

 

Yesterday  I attended the joint Process Improvement workshop for Lean Lawyering, which was hosted by several Florida public-interest lawyers and LegalRnD at the State Bar of Michigan. Here’s a link to the workshop’s website:

There were about 40 participants at the meeting, and I had the opportunity to meet and share ideas with practicing practitioners from law firms, legal aid entities, courts, and corporations from around Michigan.

The conference was very thoughtfully organized and included experiences from the implementation 

of process improvement techniques by Amy Burns, Deputy Director of Florida Rural Legal Services; Ilenia Sanchez-Bryson, Chief Information Officer at Legal Services of Greater Miami; Kristen Lentz, Managing Attorney for Disability Rights Florida; and Melissa Moss, Principal/owner of CatalystZone, LLC. Though I’ve attended a number of lean thinking and process improvement conferences, this was the first time that I’ve heard from actual attorneys who’ve implemented the process.

 

Discussion topics at the conference all centered around implementation of lean thinking (Toyota Way) for Law to improve efficiency and quality of services rendered. After learning of the speakers’ experiences incorporating process improvement into differing aspects of their practice and operations, attendees were given the opportunity to learn by doing.

To teach process improvement through the use of a real-world example, attendees were

broken into small groups to help streamline a legal aid’s walk-in service. The current conditions, as pictured, of the legal aid’s walk-in service results in an average of 58.2 minutes for clients to be serviced. Groups were asked to map the process, pictured to the right. The groups were asked to implement process improvement techniques to decrease the average time of service to 30 minutes. My group started off by mapping the current process and identifying areas for potential improvement. We next asked ourselves why the system took 58.2 minutes for clients to be serviced. Once we determined that it was a result of the process, we next asked ourselves why again. Once we were five levels deep into the why process, we finally had our answer!