Do You Want Your Lawyer Using AI
Do you want your lawyer using AI?
Following up on recent two recent blogs related to Learning Language Models (LLMs) use in the legal area, specifically on to the extent LLMs (often referred to as AI Tools) makes routine contracts easier or more complicated for general counsels, and tips for working with counterparties using AI Tools, the question came up – do you want your lawyers using AI?
Here’s a lawyer’s answer: it depends.
We are all hearing horror stories of how even lawyers at top law firms are going to court with documents that were supported by AI Tools with “hallucinations” not caught by the attorney reviewing the work before submission. That can discourage using AI Tools by creating distrust in the AI Tools supporting legal work. They are also among the reasons why the American Bar Association has started to issue guidance, both model rules and ethical guidance, for how attorneys should engage with AI Tools.
There is reason for such caution. Beyond hallucinations, I commented in an earlier blog about how particularly routine contracts will start to look and feel the same. This message is similar to one made by Kirkland & Ellis Chair Jon Ballis, who noted that widely available AI tools were creating a base-line floor for services. He further noted that his firm does not get hired for the floor. I think most attorneys would make the same argument that they provide better than the floor service level.
That said, AI Tools are now part of the fabric of legal services with the ABA pointing to a study suggesting a 69% adoption rate by legal professionals, of one AI Tool or another. They aren’t going away, and in fact the adoption rate may increase similar to the adoption rate of search engines shortly after the internet became mainstream.
The key is having attorneys know what their AI Tools are good for, and to make sure that they are still doing their work.
Not all AI Tools are equally good at all legal support, but to varying degrees, AI Tools can be helpful for a variety of tasks that can make a lawyer more efficient in areas such as legal research, due diligence, organization of data, document management and drafting, supporting analysis with options and comparisons, and a variety of other tasks. However, each one of these tasks also requires judgment and the aforementioned horror stories mentioned have a common theme – the attorney allowed their judgment to be substituted for AI (folks, if you cite something, you should cite check it).
Let’s be clear what AI Tools are –comprehensive data sorting and word-processing tools which create natural language outputs. They do not innovate or exercise judgment, they use complex word-association predictions to determine the most probable (but not necessarily true) response to your query. Innovation and creativity, problem solving, and judgment still fall to the lawyer (and the clients and their teams) to provide solutions, even in routine contracts or simple matters.
A client will likely want their attorney to be efficient while also providing reliable legal services and exercising good judgment.
AI Tools tailored to legal services are also often better than those available to the general public (especially free, open-source versions which may affect the attorney client privilege), and no question they continue to improve, but Artificial Intelligence is really a misnomer (there is no intelligence involved, which is why my first blog on the subject preferred to reference these tools as learning language models (LLMs).
The attorney intelligence still matters.
About the Author- Biz Law Blog
Jeff Cassin is a business attorney concentrating his practice in the areas of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), investment transactions, corporate law, and business contracts. Jeff serves as outside general counsel to companies without an internal GC or supports internal GCs with specialist needs. Jeff represents middle-market, mid-size businesses, funds, start-ups, media and technology companies, and individual investors, among others. He counsels clients concerning complex middle-market M&A transactions, deal negotiations, and management decisions, and has served as primary attorney on dozens of sell-side and buy-side transactions across industries.