The judge who handled the Java case between Google and Oracle codes and understands Java programming. So, as the heavyweights were making their arguments, he understood everything, and using that first-hand knowledge, made his calls.
The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. Of all the lines of code that Oracle had tested — 15 million in total — these were the only ones that were “literally” copied. Every keystroke, a perfect duplicate. It was in Oracle’s interest to play up the significance of rangeCheck as much as possible, and David Boies, Oracle’s lawyer, began to argue that Google had copied rangeCheck so that it could take Android to market more quickly. Judge Alsup was not buying it.
“I couldn’t have told you the first thing about Java before this trial,” said the judge. “But, I have done and still do a lot of programming myself in other languages. I have written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times or more. I could do it. You could do it. It is so simple.”
That takes me to this piece on the legal practice in Nigeria by Mussa Ohomorihiomayi Alexandra.
“Conclusively, AI offers lawyers the opportunity to carve a niche and to focus on areas of ‘lawyering’ where they are indispensable and are irreplaceable by machines. A successful legal practice in the nearest future will be that which has adjusted itself to changes in AI as well as delivers the parts of legal services machines cannot provide. According to Deloitte, about 100,000 legal sector jobs are likely to be automated in the next twenty years and Global Institute estimates that 23% of a lawyer’s job could be automated. As such, its practitioners must develop skills in data analysis, become legal software experts, legal engineers and learn how to design and write algorithms, etc.”
Typically, I do not attempt to summarize lawyers’ writings as their “heavy” grammar is always intentional. The learned gentlemen of the bar always think ahead of us the commoners. So, typically, I copy and paste, and if you want more, you can click and read.
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But that said, if technology could power the legal practice in Nigeria, would you start a coding class titled “Python for SANs” for the Senior Advocates of Nigeria. Python is a programming language though – do not send them snakes!
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The Chief Justice here couldn’t say what ‘technicality’ means in legal parlance, and you are asking the lawyers to master programming languages first?
If a defence or prosecuting attorney understands high level programming languages, but the judge doesn’t, would that make any difference? When you become smarter than those who decide your fate, miseries abound.
We need to go from known to unknown, it’s not different from where you have a brilliant employee under a boss that is fantastically dumb; it doesn’t usually end well.