[humorix] Lawyers To Be Replaced With Perl Scripts

[James Baughn <jbaughn@xxxxxxx>]

Lawyers To Be Replaced With Perl Scripts
August 9, 2004

It was only a matter of time before somebody would
develop such a hideously complicated Perl script that it
would become self-aware.  This script, originally
created as a way to generate mundane legal documents,
achieved sentience last week and easily passed the
Turing Test.

"This wasn't what I had in mind," explained programmer
Eric Mulaw. "But with a 100KB Perl script, anything is
possible.  At least I'm going to make a fortune out of
this..."

Indeed, Mulaw quickly discovered that his artificial
life-form, code-named Not_HAL, has more than enough
intelligence to simulate a trial lawyer.  Without an
organic body, Not_HAL won't be able to appear in court,
but the Perl script can generate a live courtroom script
that can be fed to a minimum-wage actor reading from a
TelePrompTer in front of a judge.

"If we can have long-distance surgeries, then why not
long-distance litiguous bastardry?  It's not like
lawyers are so [expletive] important and God-like that
they have to appear in the flesh, despite what they
might think," Mulaw said.  "My virtual lawyer, running
on a small Beowulf cluster in my basement, can be just
as effective at fooling the judge as the next human."

"There's plenty of out-of-work actors that I can use as
warm bodies in court, who will be told what to say and
what to do by following Not_HAL's directions on a
heads-up display. Meanwhile, I can make an infinite
number of copies of Not_HAL -- remember, I hold the
copyright -- and take a large cut of the proceeds from
every lawsuit that my pet lawyer wins.  It's the perfect
racket."

It's not immediately clear whether any court will
actually allow this scheme, since neither Not_HAL nor
his human puppets have been admitted to the bar.  Mulaw
believes this is only a minor obstacle.

"All I need to do is partner with a high-profile lawyer
who will take on any case no matter what the
consequences.  If a law firm can accept SCO as a client,
then they can accept me, despite the fact that my
creation represents the coming extinction of all
flesh-and-blood lawyers."

"Then, we can argue in court that the bar association's
all-lawyers-must-have-a-pulse regulation is in fact a
violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.  At that
point, Not_HAL is in!  And I'll be on my way to my first
trillion..."

Jon Splatz, Humorix's Pundit and Social Commentator, has
mixed feelings about the AI lawyer.  "I, for one, salute
our new Perl script overlords.  It's about time somebody
found a way to replace millionaire lawyers with
minimum-wage puppets."

"But," he warned, "This does nothing to prevent the
Lawyerclysm, the cataclysmic future when every person
spends 95% of their time litigating in court.
Eliminating lawyers will not eliminate lawyering, and
will likely make things worse because people will be
able to file hundreds of lawsuits for the same cost as
one suit now."

"This could get ugly," he concluded.  "Does anybody know
how to build an EMP gun before it's too late?"

--
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