Artificial intelligence has become the hot topic in recent months. While attention has focused on ChatGPT and its integration with various services and browsers, the OpenAI model has also found space in other fields. One of them is the legal one, where law firms are using AI to automate tasks writing and research.
A newspaper report The Wall Street Journal mentions that dozens of law firms use GPT-4 powered software to simplify time and resource consuming tasks. These include the review and drafting of contracts, correction of errors or research of documents. He work normally done by a beginning lawyer can now be done by an AI in a matter of minutes.
CoCounsel, developed by Casetext, is an OpenAI-based platform for reviewing and preparing affidavits or analyzing contracts. The lawyers can describe a legal problem with natural language — as in ChatGPT —and get answers with a clear explanation with citations to the original sources. tools can extract terms from databases, summarize cases or generate strategys.
Although AI can optimize times and perform tasks faster than a human, it’s just a tool. Law firms like Allen & Overy do not consider it to be a substitute for the lawyer, but rather full time support. The international firm uses Harvey, a GPT-4 based software that performs analysis and drafting functions that considerably reduces the workload for its lawyers.
AI won’t replace lawyers (for now)
The presence of a lawyer is also important, since AI systems could make mistakes. One of the disadvantages of models like GPT-4 is that they often present wrong information as if it were true. Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence, is very adept at writing about conspiracy theories, though not so adept at recognizing that they’re false.
DLA Pipper, another global firm using AI, stated that it is necessary to have lawyers to supervise these tools. A data scientist working for the company said they detected an error that occurred after performing 10,000 queries. Although artificial intelligence can do the job faster, it is essential that a lawyer analyze and correct the information, if necessary.
Another important point is the perception of the AI. Min-Kyu Jung, co-founder of Latchan app that uses GPT-4 to review and draft contracts, said that there is concern about shifting responsibility to this technology. Both developers and legal firms believe that the tools do not replace the work of a lawyer, they just free them up to do other things.
A robot cannot defend you in court
Artificial intelligence also has to overcome other obstacles, since it the laws are not adapted for use in courts. A lawsuit filed in the United States seeks to prevent the DoNotPay app from practicing law. An AI-powered application does not have a university degree or license, so it cannot offer legal services according to current legislation.
The truth is these tools represent a paradigm shift for most. “Some skills take a 12-hour task to 1 hour, but in the long run it reduces the work from 100 days to 1 day,” said Chris Nidel of the firm Nidel & Pace. For his part, John Villasenor, a professor at the UCLA Institute of Technology, Law, and Policy, believes that long-language models like GPT-4 have the capacity to reshape the practice of law.