This law firm just hired a robot to work as an attorney

Q: What's the difference between a robot and a leech?

A: After you die, a leech stops sucking your blood.

Let's face it. Robot jokes just don't have the same ring as lawyer jokes. But the two might soon be synonymous: One of the U.S.'s biggest law firms has just "hired" the world's "first artificially intelligent attorney."

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That means a robot, named ROSS, is the newest member of BakerHostetler, which employs 900 (human) lawyers and 50 alone in its bankruptcy practice, where ROSS works. Created by IBM, ROSS will take on a role normally given to lawyers just starting out their careers — sifting through legal documents that help build the firm's cases, The Washington Post reports.

"ROSS surfaces relevant passages of law and then allows lawyers to interact with them. Lawyers can either enforce ROSS's hypothesis or get it to question its hypothesis," the chief executive of ROSS Intelligence, Andrew Arruda, said. ROSS's software allows lawyers to "upvote" or "downvote" excerpts based on how well the robot interprets their questions, helping it to "learn" how to change its research methods as it goes.

"Eventually, I bet not using these systems will come to be viewed as antiquated and even irresponsible, like writing a brief on a typewriter," law professor Ryan Cato told The Washington Post.

For the time being, though, ROSS is more of an assistant, helping attorneys move faster rather than replacing them completely. In other words, we don't have to start fretting about being conquered by our robot overlords anytime soon.

Or rather...yet.