In a stunning move, JP Morgan has automated a process that was worth 360.000 lawyer hours every year. This is detailed in Bloomberg’s ‘JPMorgan Software Does in Seconds What Took Lawyers 360,000 Hours‘. Of course the article does not mention in detauil how much it cost to develop this new ‘Contract Intelligence’ software, but the result is that a number of lawyers are not longer needed for basic legal checks.
This requires a tremendous investment (9% of revenue according to the paper, which translates into billions of dollars) but it is clear that the standard, mundane work is getting automated fast by the most performing companies. Apparently it has also allowed to diminish human error in the interpretation of contracts and deals.
Like traders have been displaced by algorithms, it looks like banking back office is ripe for being displaced by Artificial Intelligence and bots. And this might be the direction all transaction-based companies (like insurance and other similar industries) will take soon. This will create a huge social issue, that can already be observed as to the state of employment in the banking industry.
