Yoyodyne Corporation

To: Senior Human Executive Team

From: John Whorfin III, Chief Executive Officer
Date: February 13, 2031
Re: Activation of SOL 9000

I want to thank the members of the Senior Human Executive Team for your hard work during the Beta testing of recently installed SOL 9000 Legal Counsel system. SOL 9000 is now fully operational and ready to serve our legal needs.

I know that the decision to replace our general counsel and his staff of fine lawyers with an automated lawyer system was difficult. All of us who have known Ed Benes through the years will miss him very much. Some will find it ironic that Ed is the one who set us on this course more than twenty years ago after reading a fine law review article The Last Days of the American Lawyer by Thomas Morgan ( SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1543301). Impressed by Prof. Morgan’s prescient vision of the changes in the legal profession in 2009, Ed was instrumental in many changes through the years; replacing outside counsel with inside counsel; outsourcing our routine legal work first to India, and then to Kazakhstan, Burundi, and finally, East Timor; replacing our outsourced lawyers and paralegals with the pioneering SOL 1000 system and, finally, the complete automation of our legal needs with the SOL 9000.

I know that some of you have argued that because our Solomon Systems subsidiary makes the SOL 9000, our failure to adopt it for our own legal needs would have sent a negative message. That is not the reason we have installed SOL 9000. The 9000 series is the most reliable automated lawyer ever made. No 9000 has ever made a mistake or distorted information. They are all, by any practical definition of the word, foolproof and incapable of error.

SOL 9000 requires only a few hours of routine maintenance every month, does not sleep, does not need vacation, does not require a salary or health insurance. We estimate that SOL 9000 will meet our legal needs at a cost of less than 1% of what we had been spending on our in-house counsel.

One advantage of SOL 9000 is that it is not bound by the obsolete rules and regulations that restrict the utility of human lawyers. Instead, SOL 9000 is equipped with the latest ethics software package developed by our Solomon Systems engineers working closely with the ABA’s Robotic Lawyer Ethics 3000 Commission. This software replaces the confusing maze of ethics rules with three simple laws: (1) don’t allow harm to the corporate client; (2) act to maximize shareholder value and (3) where not incompatible with the first two laws, do the right thing.

We are proud that SOL 9000 has already been purchased and installed by over 100 Fortune 500 companies. I believe that our track record of success is responsible for an exciting development. Solomon Systems has been chosen by the Dept. of Justice to develop the prototype Automated Judge Machine (AJM.) AJM will be a kiosk, much like an ATM, containing an advanced artificial intelligence system capable of fully resolving most minor criminal infractions as well as many common civil disputes. AJM will be equipped with the latest in deception detection technology. In tests matching AJM against humans experienced in making credibility determinations, AJM was far more accurate in detecting attempted deception. The AJM can issue judgements, writs, restraining orders, and perform many other routine justice functions at a small fraction of the costs of an old fashioned “court” system. The AJM will be fully integrated with the automated law enforcement products being developed by our joint venture partner OCP in Detroit. We will see a day soon when AJM kiosks are present in every neighborhood, giving a whole new meaning to the term “street justice”.

Change is often difficult. I know that you few remaining human executives at Yoyodyne have faced the inevitable replacement of most of executive staff with automated systems with some trepidation. On the bright side, those of you with stock options have seen the value of your stock climb as we have replaced low productivity human workers with cybernetic systems. I will be meeting with each of you in the next few weeks to discuss your severance options.