Legal research is often tedious and painstaking. Globally, there are legions of English-language fluent attorneys trained in the same “British common law” that underpins all legal systems in former British colonies (yes, that does include the US and Canada and… India). There are entire workforces of such “experts” in developing nations like India and even the Philippines, who can access US state and federal caselaw, regulations, ordinances, administrative rulings and procedures and statutes with the same online access available to American practitioners.
India is particularly salient because of its rich educational specialization in engineering, math and science, making Indian trained counsel particularly appropriate for drafting complex patent applications for US, UK, New Zealand, Australian and Canada-based patent lawyers. This has been going on for years and has evolved into a relatively smooth and effective process.
Complex litigation, both at the trial and appellate levels, also invites such expertise residing in those countries, especially for smaller US law firms facing BIG LAW with legions of overpaid associates who can be forced to work overnight to deliver briefs on a deadline. In the US, the 9.5-to-12.5-hour time difference with India helps small US staffs prepare detailed briefs in the middle of trials. Generally, the lawyers in the US who use those outsourced documents review them with care, making changes where they believe they are needed.
Over the years, many such lawyers in India began to anticipate and accommodate stylistic changes and patterns in their US clients’ expectations. While the Indian experts, real lawyers (some actually admitted to practice in the US), are not cheap, they cost a lot less than their American counterparts and can scale up to give a smaller law firm the ability to scale up and counter a much larger legal opponent. It was just a matter of time before lawyers decided to apply artificial intelligence to legal documentation. This was especially true of smaller firms who really did not know how to find the most qualified outsource firms in India or who thought they could do it for free.
After all, other professions were already using AI with stunning results. Having the benefit of millions of MRI, CT and single X-ray scans in their accessible database, AI systems programmed for diagnostic radiology were even more accurate than seasoned practitioners. In the world of currency trading, corporate analysis, trading predictions and detailed financial analytics, AI was knocking it out of the ballpark. These professions, however, have spent tens of millions of dollars or more developing their databases and fine tuning the necessary programs until they were sophisticated enough to grow their own internal abilities though self-learning.
Unfortunately, not so much in the legal profession. But younger, tech-worshipping younger lawyers, native in using computer programs for their entire lives, placed a little too much faith in AI’s large language models (like ChatGPT) to ferret out legal precedents and statutes via their access to “everything, everywhere, all at once” of online, searchable data. That level of professional software and focused legal research had not yet been developed. But AI was pretty good at “filling in the gaps,” especially ChatGPT, that made stuff look like the real thing, even if that required some “embellishment.” The results to date, however, have not been particularly good for those legal tech-worshippers who simply used what AI systems dished out.
But as Pranshu Verma and Will Oremus (Washington Post, November 16th) explain: “Zachariah Crabill was two years out of law school, burned out and nervous, when his bosses added another case to his workload this May. He toiled for hours writing a motion until he had an idea: Maybe ChatGPT could help?
“Within seconds, the artificial intelligence chatbot had completed the document. Crabill sent it to his boss for review and filed it with the Colorado court… ‘I was over the moon excited for just the headache that it saved me,’ he told The Washington Post. But his relief was short-lived. While surveying the brief, he realized to his horror that the AI chatbot had made up several fake lawsuit citations.
“Crabill, 29, apologized to the judge, explaining that he’d used an AI chatbot. The judge reported him to a statewide office that handles attorney complaints, Crabill said. In July, he was fired from his Colorado Springs law firm. Looking back, Crabill wouldn’t use ChatGPT, but says it can be hard to resist for an overwhelmed rookie attorney.”
Writing for the November 17th Journal of the American Bar Association, Debra Cassens Weiss, adds: “Another newly hired lawyer with the Dennis Block firm resigned after she apparently used AI to write a legal brief in an eviction case. An opposing attorney realized that the brief cited nonexistent caselaw, leading a judge in the case to impose a $999 penalty…
“The chatbots are designed to make conversation and to come up with plausible-sounding answers to questions, [Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer scientist and director of the Center for Technology Responsibility at Brown University] said. When a chatbot is asked to write briefs, it knows that it should include legal citations, but it hasn’t read the relevant caselaw to be accurate.
“Judges are responding in a variety of ways, the article reports. Some ban lawyers from using AI, while others are requiring disclosure… Bar associations are also responding. The ABA announced the creation of the ABA Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence in August. Among the issues that it will explore are the risks of using AI, the use of AI to increase access to justice, and the role of AI in legal education.” Many states are following the new California Bar rule requiring lawyers to familiarize themselves with understanding relevant changes in technology. And while legal research is a most appropriate space for the use of AI, there needs to be a whole lot of specialized software and integration with online databases before that works the way those disappointed young lawyers noted above can actually do what they thought they could do now! And that is millions and millions of dollars of R&D that will eventually be available… for a fat price.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if your lawyer is primarily built around CPUs and fabricated databases, you may not win your case, but that lawyer’s malpractice insurance might come in handy.
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