The linked summary of his work (https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/bates-clark/y...) is far more informative than the Bloomberg article with the clickbaity headline.

Obligatory link when automated lawyering comes up: http://www.ftrain.com/nanolaw.html

Worth the read.

Overall cool article, but it seems to blow by the fact that lawyers aren't expected, or usually practically able, to write complete contracts for the solution space (the space being all potential states of the relevant portions of the universe at time of enforcement).

When they do they're for relatively trivial contracts, or for standardized contracts (think a commodities future) that purposely limit the relevant universe to the easily measurable.

I don't think we're going to see HFL compete with human lawyers in the way that HFT competes with human traders anytime soon. To the extent that dynamically rewritten contracts become a thing I think we'll largely view them as an iteration of HFT actually.

On a partially related note I was discussing a law-tech idea with a lawyer friend who pointed out the (US at least) issue that law firms have to be owned by attorneys. A lot of potential legal tech ideas then basically are on thin ice if the tech's behavior is close enough to the line of lawyering. The HFL described would certainly run into that issue (at least enough for one case to set precedence).

Sounds like hell:

In a nutshell, Sannikov’s theories describe how an employer would adjust a contractor’s compensation in real time, in response to changing performance and external conditions. Where most previous researchers only allowed contracts to be updated at regular intervals, Sannikov described what happens when they can be changed infinitely fast.

   Business service robots will bring forward 
   the day when we need to think hard about 
   how to spread the massive wealth created by
   the automation of everything.

It's a nice thought, but we haven't even yet replaced meatbag lawyers doing the relative basics like document review.