Injured In A Car Accident? Your Legal Adversary Is Artificial Intelligence Posted on : Aug 04 - 2021

Attorney Jack Cohen knows both sides of the blame and claim game. He’s spent nearly 40 years practicing law, much of it trying injury suits for insurance companies. But he’s also written a novel called “Bad Faith,” which tells the story from the victim’s side.

Cohen knows his limitations—you can’t fight artificial intelligence (AI). You have to work with it. When he gets a new case, he sits down at his computer and goes straight to Lex Machina—Latin legalese for “Law Machine” and a company that provides litigation data and analytics.

Artificial intelligence has profoundly changed the legal landscape in ways almost incomprehensible to people injured in car accidents and forced into the court system each year by unfortunate and hurtful circumstances. “Injured in an accident? We can help,” blare the televised legal ads, followed by the multimillion-dollar settlements they’ve won.

The Merciless Yardstick

In many cases it’s artificial intelligence—rather than your lawyer—that could determine how much your injury, pain, suffering and, perhaps, disability is worth. And unlike your sympathetic attorney, AI is a merciless yardstick.

Think of AI as a miner who tunnels through billions of pieces of litigation data in all the major courts of the nation for gold: relevant information about decisions, motions, lawyers, judges, the parties filing suits and the subject of the cases themselves. It then tells how to use that information to win cases or—more likely—what kind of settlement is likely.

The lawyers representing both sides in an injury case—the insurance company and the victim—may thrash and posture, but in the end an estimated 97% of these cases are settled, while only a handful actually go to trial.

And even in the courtroom, artificial intelligence may be wearing the black robes, because in many instances it knows exactly how a certain judge will rule. AI already knows which state, city and local courts are more favorable to workers compensation and auto insurers, and which jurisdictions these carriers call “judicial hellholes.”

Artificial intelligence extends even further into the legal profession. It can predict which lawyers and law firms are going to be hard-nosed and which are likely to broker a cheap settlement. Big law firms now pitch major insurers and companies on how good they are—a practice known as “beauty contests”—using AI data to highlight their won/loss record and timeliness in getting the right judgment. View More