For more than two decades, SpeechWare has been a consulting company specializing in speech recognition and natural language processing. Jesús María Boccio, a lawyer by profession, is the founder of the company and also the founder of DigaLaw, a tool that emerged from the first company and has since gained its own identity. In 2022, it provided the technology that enabled Telefónica to win the contract from the Spanish Ministry of Justice to set up an automatic voice transcription platform for the entire judicial system.
DigaLaw uses artificial intelligence to accurately convert speech into text. It specializes in the legal sector and is aimed at lawyers and institutions that work with legal documents. Over the last year, the software has also integrated the GPT engine for other tasks, such as reviewing contracts.
Jesús María Boccio, founder and CEO of DigaLaw, visited Neosmart's offices to explain the company's position in the market for AI tools for the legal sector. He also spoke about the impact of this technology on the legal profession.
- How was DigaLaw born?
DigaLaw is a compound word made up of ‘diga’ (to say) and ‘law’. Originally, it was a product I developed for myself because I am unable to type.
- And that’s why it’s used to convert speech into text. Can you briefly explain what DigaLaw is?
We have an obvious and perhaps the most powerful aspect, which is dictation. Dictating documents, emails, anything. But we are talking about dictation with artificial intelligence. This is not a dictation system where you say “in dubio pro reo",” “pacta sunt servanda” or “non bis in idem",” general principles of law, and it then makes nine mistakes, as might be the case with other dictation systems of large multinational companies. These systems are not suitable for this work. Our system does not make such errors because it has been trained with thousands of laws, regulations and other legal documents.
- At what speed does DigaLaw allow dictation?
You can work three to four times faster than with a typewriter. For example, I dictate at 180 words per minute. That means one A4 page every 2-3 minutes.
- What other applications does your tool have?
We are the only speech recognition system on the market that has GPT permanently integrated. This allows you to constantly interact with your system. If I open a contract that I have not had time to read because I have just taken a flight and it's 50 pages long, I can open it with DigaLaw and say, “Summarize this contract in three pages or less, highlighting any points where there may be a problem or conflict between the parties.” I get the answer immediately. Once I have the answer, I can go on and say: “Please elaborate a little on the issue of jurisdiction between the public administration, the autonomy and the central government.” And the system continues.
- Since when has your company been working with AI?
We’ve been doing it for a long time. Today everyone is an AI expert, but we started with DigaLaw more than five years ago [the project started in 2017]. However, AI only became really popular, easy to use and effective two years ago with the commercial use and massive, widespread access to the GPT language model family.
- As a technology company that deals with the legal sector on a daily basis, what changes are in store for lawyers?
The impact will be huge for our profession and for so-called ‘paralegals’. In the next three or four years, many of the tasks we do today will be taken over by our digital assistants, our digital twins. With DigaLaw, for example, I have created my own digital twin that I can entrust with many routine tasks.
- What is a digital twin?
It’s relatively simple. I have 20 or 25 years of digital life — emails, reports, court cases. Now I am training an LLM model with that digital life. You’ll see that the system will write almost exactly like me.
- Some lawyers might see this as a threat to their job…
I am not going to say today that you will be replaced by a robot lawyer. But certainly a lawyer who knows how to use this technology will have a significant advantage over a lawyer who does not. This is a big risk that any lawyer, scientist or consultant needs to consider.
- How do you think lawyers perceive AI?
In every profession, especially in the legal and consulting industry, there are enthusiasts and pioneers. These people fear nothing and no one. They see it and embrace it wholeheartedly. Secondly, there are confused and worried individuals, a large group who say, “I already have to know enough about law and keep myself up to date, and now I am supposed to be a prompter too?” And finally, there is the third group, which is still quite large in Spain, who are indifferent and think: “It's not for me, it's not for me.”
- How do you think the legal profession will change?
The traditional practice of law will be replaced. It will be replaced by a constant and mandatory dialog with legal AI algorithms. Your job will be your ability to communicate with these algorithms.
- Given your experience with the implementation of the DigaLaw system in the Spanish judiciary, how involved do you think the public sector is in the implementation of AI?
It is interesting what is happening in Spain right now. I think that the private sector, especially in the legal sector, is quite behind compared to what I see in Europe and other countries. However, the public sector is very progressive. Spain is leading the way and using European money to digitize and streamline its justice system.
- What precautions should a lawyer take when using AI tools?
As a lawyer, you have to respect professional ethics, which includes absolute confidentiality. The risk of confidentiality arises when you mention a client's name or refer to something that is protected by intellectual property rights. It is clear that lawyers need to be careful.
- And the results of AI tools also need to be monitored by humans…
Of course, they need both prior and post review. Once the document is written and seems to be in order, you need to check it again and read it twice.
