Comment Computers as lawyers (Score 3, Insightful) 116
IAAL and a programmer. Let me start by saying: people have been promising expert systems to resolve a "great many disputes" for almost as long as there's been personal computers. And in some cases, those systems exist, but not in the form of legal expert systems, but negotiated transaction expert systems like you see in financial trading and the like. If the goal is always an equitable resolution of shared information, then computers can do it. Divorce between amicable partners would seem to be a prime example.
But that's not the reason people usually use lawyers in transactions. It's for all the other things that can possibly go wrong, including failure to share all the information (e.g., untrusted parties), not wanting "equitable" divisions, interpretation, etc.
If all the world just did the right thing, there'd be no need for lawyers.