The legal industry is becoming increasingly international and multilingual in an ever more globalized world. Nonetheless, this trend poses an essential challenge: how can legal professionals effectively communicate in such a multilingual environment, which is often time-sensitive and has high accuracy demands? The answer is AI, more precisely, AI-powered machine translation.
In this blog post, we will look at the challenges the legal industry faces in a multilingual environment, and how AI-powered machine translation can address them.
Challenges in the Legal Industry
- Access to justice: Many people face barriers in accessing legal services due to cost, language barriers, or lack of knowledge. It creates a justice gap, where individuals cannot adequately address their legal needs.
- Technological advancements: While technology offers opportunities for efficiency, it also presents challenges such as cybersecurity risks, privacy concerns, and the need for legal professionals to adapt to digital tools.
- Changing legal landscape: Laws and regulations evolve, requiring lawyers and legal professionals to stay updated with changes in their respective practice areas.
Which Areas Will Benefit from AI-Powered Machine Translation in the Legal Industry?
Area 1: Knowledge discovery: When a law firm takes on an international case, there could be hundreds of thousands of documents in multiple languages that need to be analyzed. By using machine translation, law firms can translate these documents into their working language in a short time and search for relevant documents for the case much more conveniently and efficiently.
Area 2: International business and trade: In an increasingly globalized world, businesses engage in international transactions, contracts, and negotiations. Machine translation can help translate legal documents into different languages, such as contracts, agreements, and terms of service. This ensures that all parties involved understand the terms and conditions, reducing the risk of dispute or misunderstanding.
Area 3: Immigration and Asylum Law: Immigration and asylum cases often involve individuals who do not speak the language of the host country’s legal system. Machine translation can assist in translating immigration forms, legal documents, and interviews, making the process more accessible and efficient for both the applicants and the legal professionals involved.
Area 4: Intellectual property law: Intellectual property law protects copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets across different jurisdictions. Machine translation can aid in translating patent applications, trademark registrations, and legal agreements related to intellectual property rights. It helps businesses navigate international IP laws and protect their intellectual property assets.
Area 5: Cross-border litigation: Litigation involving parties from different countries and legal systems can be complex, especially when translating legal documents and court filings. Machine translation can facilitate the translation of court documents, judgments, legal opinions, and other relevant materials, helping legal professionals and judges comprehend the case and make informed decisions.
Note: Post-editing by professional translators with subject-area expertise is still necessary in those cases where an absolutely accurate translation is of utmost importance.
What Can AI-Powered Machine Translation Do For the Legal Industry?
- Time and cost efficiency: manual translation of legal documents is time-consuming and costly, especially when dealing with large volumes of documents or multiple languages. Machine translation can significantly reduce the time and cost involved in translation, as it can quickly process and translate documents with minimal human intervention.
- Consistency: legal terminology is highly specialized and specific. AI-powered machine translation can translate legal terms and phrases consistently, ensuring that the same terminology is used across all translated documents. It is particularly important for multinational law firms or businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions.
- Accessibility: AI-powered translation can improve accessibility to legal services for individuals who do not speak the language of the legal system they are dealing with. It can help bridge language barriers and ensure that legal information and documents are accessible to all, regardless of language proficiency.
- Scalability: As the legal industry continues to globalize, the demand for translation services is increasing. AI-powered translation software can quickly scale up to meet the growing demand, allowing legal professionals to efficiently handle translation requirements across multiple languages and jurisdictions.
Conclusion
AI-powered translation helps the legal industry boost operational efficiency, improve accessibility and scalability, and reduce costs. It is important to note that the need for translation technology may vary depending on a law firm or an organization's specific legal system, jurisdiction, and client demographics. Nonetheless, the demand for translation technology in the legal industry is expected to grow in an increasingly interconnected world. If you are interested in how Lengoo’s AI-powered translation could help you, please contact us.