We use cookies to compile information about how our website is used and to improve the experience of our website visitors. You can review and update your cookie setting by clicking "Manage cookies preferences". For more information about the cookies we use, please read our
Cookies and Electronic Marketing Policy.

22 May 2018

Interview with Nicola Atkinson, the first CLI Research Fellow


Published on 22 May 2018

Nicola Atkinson, CLI’s first Research Fellow, forecasts the future lawyer of 2025

Nicola Atkinson has long been a leader and change agent in the legal profession. As Global Co-Head of Expertise for international law firm, Ashurst, Nicola was responsible for constantly improving knowledge and information management and ensuring excellence in legal services delivery. Prior to an illustrious career in legal learning and development, Nicola worked as a solicitor and associate to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland. Nicola recently joined the Centre for Legal Innovation (CLI) as its first Research Fellow.

“The Research Fellowship Program is unique for someone like me who is interested in exploring a specific question within the broader field of legal innovation. I’m interested in the potential of what Jordan Furlong calls ‘expertise AI’ as opposed to ‘volume AI’ and what it will mean for the profession, particularly for legal education,” said Nicola.

“Innovation in the legal sector is so new and dynamic that research is best done in conjunction with those who are actively engaged in the front lines, and, as far as possible, practical and ‘applied’. CLI is already working with lawyers and legal professionals across all tiers of the professions through its program of activities and research. This is what made this Fellowship enormously attractive to me.”

Nicola also praised CLI for its work with legal innovation experts, allowing it to contribute to how the profession is preparing itself for the future of legal practice in new and different ways.

“As a learning and development practitioner, I wanted to work collaboratively and with support to conduct relevant research whilst also continuing to work with lawyers in practice. The CLI Research Fellowship allows me to do that.”

In many ways, Nicola has been considering “how lawyers think” for the better part of her career – firstly as an academic teaching non-lawyers about environmental law, then as a learning and development professional at Ashurst.

“As the global head of the learning and development, then knowledge function at Ashurst, I was responsible for delivering legal training programs that supported our lawyers in their delivery of the highest quality legal advice to their clients.”

This role saw Nicola witness seismic shifts in legal education and the role of technical knowledge.

“Much of the technical knowledge that is assumed to be part of a law degree – for example, tax law, securities, and even aspects of commercial law – can’t always fit in the few years of a law degree. This means you can’t always assume junior lawyers possess certain kinds of technical knowledge. At the same time, the importance of combined degrees is growing, while the pace of change in law has also grown exponentially. All the while, junior lawyers’ access to more senior practitioners who can teach and mentor them through all of this has become ever more remote.

“Legal expertise is also being increasingly ‘automated’ – through automated precedents, dedicated software, NewLaw providers, and artificial intelligence platforms like ROSS Intelligence. This means learning opportunities for junior lawyers, previously found in, for example, legal research and preparing early document drafts, are declining and, at the same time, expectations of them and their ability to undertake these tasks in new ways or differently are increasing.

“All in all, my career has been dominated by a long interest in the development of lawyers and the progressive acquisition of their expertise - how they come to know what they know and demonstrate this knowledge to others – and how might this change in the future.”

Through the CLI Research Fellowship, Nicola will be exploring what it will mean to be a “legal expert” in 2025 – not a “trusted adviser” or a “strategic business partner” - but an expert in the law and its principles.

“I’m interested in the intersection between legal expertise and artificial intelligence. What will this mean for the way we will educate our lawyers in the future? Broadly, my hypothesis is that, in a world of AI, natural language processing and deep learning, a rigorous study of the law and legal principles no longer has the same centrality to the role of the lawyer as it did in the past. It will be more properly the purview only of academics and computer programmers.”

Nicola acknowledges this is may be a radical hypothesis.

“It is intended to provide a foundation for further research and to encourage a candid, informed and rigorous conversation about AI in the profession. I’m particularly keen to investigate and generate ideas about the next best practices in equipping the lawyers of the future to deliver relevant legal services.”

“The starting point for this research will be to work with legal professionals to distil and articulate the critical questions relating to what AI means for legal expertise starting with:

  • What is it that lawyers really do when they answer a legal problem?
  • To what extent can that cognitive process be modelled by a computer?
  • Do we really understand the limits of what AI might be able to deliver by way of solving legal problems and do we understand what capabilities we will need in a world supported by AI?”

Nicola is honoured to be the CLI’s first Research Fellow.

“I hope my contribution to the work of CLI goes some way in continuing to build its reputation as a leading centre for practical and applied research for the legal professions. Through the Research Fellowship program, the Centre has an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the future of legal practice and I look forward to helping in that endeavour.”

In the short term, Nicola sees the Research Fellowship program as an important driver of cultural change and enquiry that she believes must underpin legal innovation in the future.

“The Research Fellowship program facilitates engagement with the profession within a coherent and structured framework. Through its research projects, the Centre can collaborate with practitioners and encourage them to reflect on the future of legal practice at the same time as working with them to shape it.  Ultimately, the alumni and body of work created through the Research Fellowship Program will provide further avenues for scholarship and raise the capabilities of lawyers, legal professionals and law students – and I’m looking forward to being part of the momentum that the Centre has generated.”

 

Are you interested in undertaking research with CLI? Learn more about The Centre for Legal Innovation's Research Fellowships and associated criteria for application.