Legaltech.se met up with ROSS CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda during his recent trip to the Nordics.
Last week, Andrew Arruda made appearences at VQ Forum in Stockholm and Future Lawyer in Oslo. In a blistering keynote (video below) spanning an arch from Alan Turing to Kasparov and Deep Blue to the current state and future of the legal profession, he iterated that robots are here to make lawyering less robotic, not to replace lawyers.
You mentioned Her in your speech, and I think a saw a Terminator in one of your slides. We made a list of recommended sci-fi works for lawyers a while back. What movies or novels would you add to it?
- It may not be as fun as some of those titles, but I’d add the book “Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI” as it does a great job asking the question what we do next when it comes to the human and machine relationship within industry in the future, says Arruda.
- A fun title you should also add is R.U.R. which is the book with the first mention of the word “robot” – interestingly enough the first robot was invented by a man named Rossum.
It's been 18 months or so since we wrote about ROSS. You received some substantial funding - what's new since then?
- The past two years have been historical at ROSS, we announced last October that we had raised 13 million and that funding allowed us to continue to build our world-class team and expand ROSS’ capabilities.
- At the time of that interview ROSS was able to assist lawyers in US bankruptcy law, shortly thereafter we had ROSS learn US intellectual property law, then ROSS went into US labor and employment law – very excitingly we announced this summer that we were available across every single area of US law which should provide a good idea of just how far ROSS Intelligence has come since we launched in 2015.
| "I continue to believe that the next 5-10 years will lead to more innovation in our profession than the previous 100 years" | |
- I’m very proud to say we have other breakthroughs in the works so do stay tuned! The legal industry has continued to modernize and the interest in legal technology generally has grown substantially, I think this is the most exciting time ever to be in legal tech.
What's your impression of Sweden after having attended VQ Forum?
- My time in Stockholm was amazing – the excitement around legal technology and innovation was amazing to see. The fact that the VQ Forum will be in its 10th year in 2019 does point to the amount of work that has gone into setting the stage for the innovation that is occurring now, says Arruda.
| I’m guessing you’ve made similar appearances in similar-sized countries. Are we all in the same boat, or are some ahead of the curve? - I continue to see that across the world we are all in many ways at the same stages in our legal technology and innovation journey, which is all just the beginning. I am encouraged with what I continue to see and cannot wait for the years to come as it is our aspiration that ROSS will be on the legal team of every lawyer in the world. When it comes to a prediction as to what is to come, |  Helena Hallgarn och Ann Björk, VQ |
- I continue to believe that the next 5-10 years will lead to more innovation in our profession than the previous 100 years and that, to me, is very exciting.
Fredrik Svärd
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Fredrik Svärd
[email protected]
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