Bearded hipsters flog ‘revolutionary AI’ to global law firm partner ‘Gully Bull’ as new bot released that shouts at trainees

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By Alex Aldridge on

Lawtech craze inspires pre-April Fools hilarity

Was Allen & Overy’s launch earlier this week of a “tech innovation space” at its offices “on the boundary of Shoreditch and the City of London” peak lawtech?

A legal management consultancy and a law firm seem to think so, having this morning issued hilarious spoof press releases poking fun at the technology craze sweeping corporate law.

First up, the bearded hipsters flogging ‘revolutionary AI’ to global law firm partner ‘Gully Bull’

The release — reproduced in full below — announces Janders Dean’s fictional partnership with ‘Empora’, a “new global legal technology start-up darling” which appears to be wearing no clothes.

Founded by two bearded hipsters called ‘Jay’ and ‘Timmy’, and backed by “famous angel investor Hans Anderson”, Empora counts a host of global law firms among its clients, including one led by a partner named ‘Gully Bull’.

Empora is particularly excited about ‘Invisi-Trac’, a “machine learning based smart contract platform” that promises to achieve a “universal leapfrog” over all other artificial intelligence technologies that have come before them.

Bull sums up the mood in a statement:

We’ve been working on this with Empora as a skunkworks for a few months now, really ideating and hacking and such. Trying to keep the excitement contained across our firm has been really difficult.

Next, it’s the turn of Aaron & Partners’ new AaronBot, an “innovative robot created to replace underperforming law firm partners” with the ability “to replicate partner behaviours”.

According to the spoof press release, AaronBot’s “complex AI algorithm allows it to quickly recognise and replicate standard partner behaviours, such as shouting at trainees, never making tea or coffee in the office and taking credit for other people’s work.”

AaronBot also apparently features “the latest in speech recognition software and has been programmed to respond positively to any questions or criticism, whilst common law partner traits such as impatience, cynicism and petulance have all been left out of the robot’s hardwiring.”

Read the April Fools press releases in full below.

Hipsters flog ‘revolutionary AI’

The new bot that shouts at trainees and takes credit for other people’s work

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