Posted in: Lawyers › SC Lawyer Editorial Board
After her undergraduate years, Rachael Anna, member with Wyche, P.A. in Greenville, landed in London. She found a position working in a law firm and then traveled to Brazil, where she played soccer. Ultimately, her experience in London led her to apply to law school and pursue her current career.
Now, as a member of Wyche’s litigation team, Anna focuses on complex business litigation, antitrust, and data protection cases.
As part of her practice Anna had the opportunity to delve into machine learning, a type of A.I. technology, through one of her cases. The case, Kleen Prods. LLC v. Packaging Corp. of Am. (N.D. Ill.) was one of the first to consider the use of machine learning, or predictive coding, to conduct discovery review.
With machine learning becoming more common in the legal world, Anna was inspired to write her most recent SC Lawyer article, which addresses how lawyers can spot and protect themselves and clients from deepfakes.
“I have long been fascinated by the use of artificial intelligence, particularly as it relates to the legal industry,” Anna said. “Machine learning, in my experience, has provided efficiencies and improvements to the legal profession. While A.I. has the potential to benefit many industries, there are also significant risks associated with introducing technology that is incompatible with human values and intentions. I believe we see this play out with the use of deepfakes to harass women, commit fraud and deceive the public. The dangers posed by deepfakes may become much more serious in the future.”
With this technology on the rise, Anna says education and training are critical for law firms and organizations to prevent deepfakes from impacting their firms and clients.
“Employees need to understand the scope of the risks posed by deepfakes, which includes business interruption, reputational harm, lost revenues, additional expenses, and declines in share value,” said Anna. “Employers should also require ongoing training to learn how to identify deepfakes and social engineering attacks. Ideally, organizations should have a plan in place for how employees handle suspicious digital activities like deepfakes, including accounting for deepfakes in their incident response plans and evaluating their insurance policies in the event of losses.”
A seasoned writer, Anna reflected on her experience writing for the SC Lawyer magazine.
“I strongly recommending writing for the SC Lawyer,” said Anna. “I know they are always looking for timely and educational content, and I am grateful to everyone who volunteers their time to ensure such content is available to members of the Bar.”