I know that when new technology is first introduced, it always stuns people, going back to when the abacus replaced fingers and toes for counting. That was certainly before my time, although I do have a personal memory of using a slide rule or a manual adding machine in school before the calculator was created, And, that was way before the computers came crashing into our lives.
For many there is a fear that these Chatbots are going to ruin education, ruin academic achievements, and even ruin the legal practice. In simple terms, Chatbots work by instantly surveying the internet and gathering all the data points that relate to the question posed. Then the Chatbots draw on a data base of pre-programmed algorithms and scripts to generate the artificial intelligence response. But to us the response comes in plain English and looks very much like it was written by a human being.
These same responses are true in the legal field. If you pose a legal question to an artificial intelligence site, you will get back a legal answer. Depending on the question, the answer may be a complaint, a brief, a deposition prep memo, or virtually any other legal document.
A few weeks ago I observed these legal Chatbots in action. Sitting next to me in a meeting, a lawyer asked the Chatbot provider to give him a list of questions he could use in an upcoming deposition of an executive in a false advertising lawsuit. Within ten seconds, the Chatbots pushed out ten questions that were clearly an acceptable prep. As that lawyer said to me, those are the prep questions I would expect to receive from a young associate lawyer.
I recognize that those questions are just the start of the preparation for the deposition, and that those questions need to be expanded through human knowledge and human imagination, but they are a start. Obviously, those Chatbots cannot provide actual facts regarding this particular lawsuit. Nor can they evaluate whether any of the answers are complete or accurate. That remains the job of the human lawyer.
At the same time, they can be very useful as you start a project, literally giving you a jump start on completing it, thereby saving time and money. But using AI to do less work should not be the goal. In other words, the lesson should be not that AI enables us to do less; instead it should be that AI enables us to do more. I believe we can use it to bring new perspectives to issues. I believe we can use it to challenge our human intelligence.
We must also remember that Chatbots cannot discriminate relevant facts from extraneous facts, or determine which facts are true. More importantly, Chatbots cannot determine credibility or exude emotion. In other words, Chatbots are by their nature artificial, so they cannot replace the most important human parts of our writing: identifying new data, exuding emotion, and measuring veracity. Nevertheless Chatbots can use the data they gather to create new perceptions and create new beginnings for the users to build upon.
Every day there are more AI legal resources to pick from, including Spellbook, CARA by Casetext, Westlaw Edge, Luminance, and LawyerBot365 by Microsoft. Several of these are very sophisticated, and most are relatively easy to access and use. So, for anyone who wants to test their legal skills, these would give you the opportunity to do so. I hasten to add that they will not enable you to practice law.
We must accept the inevitable: The Chatbots are coming to the legal world. But we must remember that in law as in our everyday lives we need to recognize that Chatbots are a tool and not a panacea. As lawyers, we just need to learn how to use them.
Dayton attorney Merle Wilberding is a regular Ideas & Voices contributor.
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