TechLawFest 2018 - Software Is Eating Law

TL;DR
Software is eating law

Alexis “Recovering Lawyer” Chun
Co-founder, Legalese.com
@Legalese @wabisabiyo
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
Poem by Rudyard Kipling I let them rest from nine till five,
following the story "Elephant's Child" in For I am busy then,
"Just So Stories" As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes
One million Hows, Two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
TL;DR Software is eating law

Alexis “recovering lawyer” Chun • Legalese.com • TechLawFest 2018
What
The relationship between law and software today

What do people do when they
need legal help?

They go to a lawyer!
(or phone a lawyer
friend)

Lawyer Version 1.0
They go to a lawyer! Rajah & Tann Singapore
Commercial Litigation, IT & IP disputes
(or phone a lawyer TSMP Law Corporation

Corporate
friend) Got called to the Bar

Distinction in Land law
Bachelor of Laws, QMUL

Alexis with the good hair Second Upper Class with Honours
First Class in Jurisprudence
First Class in Media Law
Cambridge University
Long Vacation Scholarship

But what really happens
when they go to a lawyer?

1918
(that’s 100 years ago)
2018
Charge ~ $600/hr for input, not output
Error prone (that’s why you proof read like crazy)
Imperfect recall
Reliance on experience
Reliance on professional indemnities & a whole kitchen sink of assumptions
Typewriter Microsoft Word

100 years on, not much has changed
Lawyers still use technology to only help with
the typing, but not with the thinking

And if one may be permitted to speak frankly
in a world where...

cars drive themselves...

… where software lands / flies our
planes

… and computers are beating our
doctors

It seems quite mad to
to pay a human $600 an hour
to copy and paste words on a
page

Some of these folks certainly think so

Who are the alternatives?
And where?

2001

Gosh, when did that
happen?

You’re here at TechLawFest, so clearly something is
happening

But it’s so huuuuuge that the idea of software
eating law has been around for at least 60 years
1957

1960

1986

1979
Computer Science
and Law
Textbook we found in the
Imperial College library

Chapter 3
The taxman project:
towards a cognitive
theory of legal
argument

Chapter 4
Modelling of legal
rules by computer

Chapter 13
The automated
assembly of legal
documents

Why?
Why software & law?
Why is software eating law?

Insight
Lawyers, the
lost tribe of
programmers

a parallel

contract drafting =
small teams of
assembly programmers
writing proprietary code
by hand

the legal industry’s
future
=
the software industry’s
past

Today, lawyers use
1. different words to mean the same thing; or
2. the same words to mean different things
pseudocode
“table”
contracts and programs
are both, fundamentally,
specifications for the
distributed execution
of business processes...
except lawyers have a
language problem

How?
How will software eat law?

ENTER:
Computational law
(or what I mean when I say, “software is eating law”)

We start by designing
a domain-specific language for law

That is...
a programming language
specifically designed to capture the
semantics, deontics, and pragmatics
of law

A cross-disciplinary synergisation of over 60 years of
academic research & industry insight
Computer Science
DSL
Mathematics / Law
Logic

#1 Foundation – DSL for law
#2 Infrastructure
use the DSL to write
● Statutes Companies Act, SFA, etc
● Contracts (Employment Contracts, Service Agreements, Deeds)
● Business Process / Rules & Quasi-Legal Documentation
(ACRA filing deadlines, corporate resolutions, formalities, documents’ execution order and
authorities’ deadlines)

a well-honed software tradition
Domain : Language / Format : Category Leader
Printed Page : Postscript : Adobe (US107.8B)
Databases : SQL : Oracle (US216.6B)
3D Drawings : dwg : Autodesk (US30B)
Accounting : LP2 : Intuit (US45.3B)
Chips : Verilog : Cadence (US10.9B)
Legal : L4 : Legalese?

So?
So what if we have a programming language for law?

from Pseudocode to Real Code
45.––(1) Subject to any direction to the contrary that

may be given by the company in general meeting, all
new shares must, before issue, be offered at a 20%
discount to all persons who, as at the date of the offer,
are entitled to receive notices from the company of
general meetings, in proportion, or as nearly as the
circumstances admit, to the amount of the existing
shares to which they are entitled.

45.––(1) Subject to any direction to the contrary

that may be given by the company in general
meeting, all new shares must, before issue, be
offered at a 20% discount to all persons who, as
at the date of the offer, are entitled to receive
notices from the company of general meetings, in
proportion, or as nearly as the circumstances
admit, to the amount of the existing shares to
which they are entitled.

Subject to (any direction to the contrary
that may be given by the company in general meeting),
all new shares must (before issue) {
be offered at a 20% discount -> to all persons
who (as at the date of the offer)
are (entitled to receive notices
from the company
of general meetings) {
in proportion,
or as nearly as the circumstances admit,
to the amount of the existing shares
to which they are entitled.
} }
Subject to (any direction to the contrary
that may be given by the company in general meeting),
be offered -> to companyMembers(at: offer.date,
qualifier: meetings)
{
distribution: proRata,
qualifier: roundingAdjustment,
basis: existingHoldings,
price: function(newIssue) { newIssue.price * 0.80 }
}
}

syntax → semantics → pragmatics
Subject to (any direction to the contrary % l4c -Wall -Wextra --lang=en,de main.l4
that may be given by the company in general warnings and errors:
meeting), line 12: unenforceable clause
line 18: regulatory violation
be offered -> to companyMembers(at: offer.date,
line 22: clause never reached
qualifier: meetings)
{ line 28: conflict with line 16: incompatible obligations
line 33: exceeds market norms for EU consumer protection
Subject to any direction to the contrary distribution: proRata,
main.4 produced output:
qualifier: roundingAdjustment,
that may be given by the company in basis: existingHoldings. main.html: outcome scenario visualizations
general meeting, all new shares must, price: function(newIssue) { newIssue.price*0.80 english.pdf: contract text in English (UK)
} german.pdf: contract text in German (DE)
before issue, be offered at a 20% } sign.Makefile: execution sequence
discount to all persons who, as at the } main.mpp: project deliverables
date of the offer, are entitled to receive main.ical: deadline reminders
notices from the company of general
meetings, in proportion, or as nearly as
the circumstances admit, to the amount
of the existing shares to which they are
entitled.

So?

You can now apply the batteries of tools
that computer scientists have at their
disposal (of which lawyers don’t even have names for)
to law

Software Stack
app stores, self-updating packages
StackExchange, IRC, code reviews, agile pairs
build dependency management
FOSS Libraries, apps, tutorials
git+github: versions, issues, pull requests
static analysis, formal methods, fuzzing, lint
unit testing, code coverage
m4 macros, MVC template filling
IDEs: Eclipse, Sublime, Atom, Emacs, Vim
C, C++, Java, Javascript, Lisp, Prolog, Haskell
Lambda Calculus

Software Stack Legal Stack
git+github: versions, issues, pull requests Track Changes
IDEs: Eclipse, Sublime, Atom, Emacs, Vim Microsoft Word
C, C++, Java, Javascript, Lisp, Prolog, Haskell Latin
Lambda Calculus

Software Stack Legal Stack
git+github: versions, issues, pull requests Track Changes
IDEs: Eclipse, Sublime, Atom, Emacs, Vim Microsoft Word
C, C++, Java, Javascript, Lisp, Prolog, Haskell Latin
Lambda Calculus

How about 2 examples?

Example 1:
Formal logic

COMPUTER
SCIENTISTS
GOT LOGIC
Acme shall keep the info confidential: AG (keep_confidential info)
Acme shall pay the purchase price: AF (pay purchase_price)

Example 2:
Automated
Reasoning
O Great Computer, check
my reasoning.
Does the contract contain

any bugs?

Yes,
puny
human,
your
bug is
here.
Software is eating
the world.
–Marc Andreessen

Software is eating
Law.
– Legalese

You either die a hero lawyer, or you live long
enough to see yourself become the villain
– Me quoting Harvey Dent
Thanks for having me!

Come say hi if you’d like to invest, have a CS or
programming background / interest, or have
industry use-cases for us to test on!
Alexis “Recoverwyerg Lawyer” Chun
Alexis “Recovering Lawyer” Chun
@wabisabiyo @Legalese
collective@legalese.com


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TL;DR

Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

(or phone a lawyer TSMP Law Corporation

friend) Got called to the Bar

Bachelor of Laws, QMUL

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

Error prone (that’s why you proof read like crazy)

Reliance on professional indemnities & a whole kitchen sink of assumptions

Typewriter Microsoft Word

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

a domain-specific language for law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

Printed Page : Postscript : Adobe (US107.8B)

Databases : SQL : Oracle (US216.6B)

3D Drawings : dwg : Autodesk (US30B)

Accounting : LP2 : Intuit (US45.3B)

Chips : Verilog : Cadence (US10.9B)

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

45.––(1) Subject to any direction to the contrary that

TL;DR Software is eating law

45.––(1) Subject to any direction to the contrary

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law

TL;DR Software is eating law