An Australian legal-tech company has invented a virtual lawyer that runs off Amazon’s Alexa platform to test whether lawyers can be replaced by robots in the future.

Smarter Drafter in Sydney has created a virtual system, the Alexa Skill, that can create legal documents in an instant, as if they were a human lawyer. The Alexa Skill asks questions like a human lawyer, then drafts a legal document laying out the context, facts, jurisdiction and best practice.

In a few minutes, a legal document can be in your lawyer’s email inbox.

The experiment is to see if robot lawyers can replace real lawyers, or at least part of their job. The high-level prototype was modelled on expert lawyers using the smallest details to create a model for a robot lawyer using artificial intelligence.

The same tasks that are currently being performed by others in a legal team (juniors, experts, etc.) can be done without error by the Alexa Skill.

The release of a simpler document creator that takes a little more time has already come, with the technology now available to create documents for estate planning, trust set-up, new business set-up, new employees, finance, property, and client guides.