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"I kind of take it for granted that our great-grandchildren will regard us as a sort of precursor species. That they won't think of us as human and if we could see them, we probably wouldn't think of them as human either."
- William Gibson

Lawyer Robot  
  An autonomous, robotic lawyer.  

“I’ve been thinking,” Albert said. “All the time I worked last night, I thought and thought about it. And I built a lawyer robot.”

“A lawyer robot!”

“One with a far greater memory capacity than any of the others and with a brain-computer that operates on logic. That’s what law is, isn’t it — logic?”

“I suppose it is,” said Lee. “At least it’s supposed to be.”

“I can make a lot of them.” Lee sighed. “It just wouldn’t work. To practice law, you must be admitted to the bar. To be admitted to the bar, you must have a degree in law and pass an examination and, although there’s never been an occasion to establish a precedent, I suspect the applicant must be human.”

“Now let’s not go too fast,” said Knight. “Albert’s robots couldn’t practice law. But couldn’t you use them as clerks - or assistants? They might be helpful in preparing the case.”

Lee considered. “I suppose it could be done. It’s never been done, of course, but there’s nothing in the law that says it can't be done.”

“All they’d need to do would be read the books,” said Albert. “Ten seconds to a page or so. Everything they read would be stored in their memory cells.”

“I think it’s a fine idea!” Knight exclaimed. “Law would be the only thing those robots would know. They’d exist solely for it. They’d have it at their fingertips — ”

“But could they use it?” Lee asked. “Could they apply it to a problem?”

“Make a dozen robots,” said Knight. “Let each one of them become an expert in a certain branch of law.”


(Lawyer robot from 'How-2' (1954) by by Clifford Simak)

Albert made three dozen lawyer robots, just to be sure they had enough.

The robots invaded Lee’s study and read all the books he had and clamored for more. They gulped down contracts, torts, evidence and case reports. They absorbed real property, personal property, constitutional law and procedural law. They mopped up Blackstone, corpus juris and all the other tomes as thick as sin and dry as dust.

Technovelgy from How-2, by Clifford Simak.
Published by Galaxy in 1954
Additional resources -

See also the automaton lawyer's clerk from The Lawyer's Clerk Question Settled (1844) by the Staff of Punch, the robot judge from Harry Harrison's excellent 1959 short story Robot Justice, lawyer programs from David Brin's 1990 novel Earth and LEX from Greg Egan's 1991 short story The Moat.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from How-2
  More Ideas and Technology by Clifford Simak
  Tech news articles related to How-2
  Tech news articles related to works by Clifford Simak

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