With the development of the digital economy, the need for legal professionals is changing. The labor market puts forward new requirements for their knowledge and competencies. In addition, the national program “Digital Economy” includes as one of the target indicators reducing personnel shortage for the digital economy and training of highly demanded specialists with the competencies required for digital transformation, Andrey Vorov, deputy head of the Analytical Center’s Digital Economy Project Office said. “There is a project envisaging changing the regulatory framework. The concept of machine-readable law has been recently announced within the project. One of the deterrents in the concept development is the insufficient qualification of lawyers in using digital technologies for introducing artificial intelligence into their work,” Vorov said.
The discussion participants pointed to the need to revise federal state educational standards, which are currently behind the digitalization pace, and to introduce digital components into them. However, in their opinion, it is impossible to combine the professions of a programmer and a lawyer. Therefore, experts propose to single out and fix in jurisprudence the digital core - a list of digital competencies that is mandatory for specialists in this profession. “Competencies of the first level will make it possible not to lose the current status and work in modern conditions, and of the second level - to actively participate in the development of new products and services,” Managing Director of the University 20.35 Center for Digital Economy Personnel Competences Oleg Podolsky said. These requirements, in his opinion, should be included in the educational standard in the future.
It is the professional lawyers who understand laws and can control their transition to digital format who will be able to prevent errors in algorithms that already affect the lives of ordinary people, said Sergei Izrailit, Director of the Development and Planning Department of the Skolkovo Foundation. “Law enforcement is already taking place through the implementation of algorithms that are automatically executed in information systems. No information system can independently understand our laws. If we want law enforcement practice to develop in accordance with the laws, then we need to learn how to correctly translate them into a machine-readable format. We need specialists who will be able to speak both languages: the legal and programming language,” the expert said.
Practicing lawyers who took part in the discussion expressed the view that digital technologies can only be a tool for work and help in solving routine tasks. Thus, the introduction of artificial intelligence can improve the quality and efficiency of judicial activity through the automated preparation of draft judicial acts, as well as increase the level of legal awareness through the introduction of expert systems for predicting the outcome of a court case. In addition, artificial intelligence can predict changes in the caseload depending on changes in legislation.