Impact of AI on Some Professions (Lawyers)
Increasingly AI is reducing the workload of young lawyers, ie grads. For example,
“…An artificial intelligence tool that law firm MinterEllison has built based on a GPT-4 platform and can whip up a basic piece of legal advice in 15 minutes - a task that would take a grad lawyer up to 8 hours…..It's a chance to liberate young lawyers from the dull grind of freshmen legal work. But it means the firm has to train its grads in new skills, and recruit in a new way…”
Hans van Leeuwen, 2024a
AI gives the chance of
“…pushing our people up the intellectual food chain so that they are doing less of the pain-and-mundane work to really provide strategic and risk advice…”
Virginia Briggs as quoted by Hans van Leeuwen, 2024a
The AI generated advice
“…Will explain how it came up with the advice, it will connect you back to the section of the legislation, or the particular part of the judgement in a legal decision…”
Virginia Briggs as quoted by Hans van Leeuwen, 2024a
Some interesting uses of AI in legal matters include
“…Analysed judgements of particular judges to determine what they think the judges may decide, even down to whether they might make a different decision in the morning as opposed to the afternoon. Also, are the different decisions by judges based on who the barristers are in front of them in the court…”
Virginia Briggs as quoted by Hans van Leeuwen, 2024a
However, some current AI related issues to be considered:
- The AI-generated advice needs to be checked by a human for its accuracy
- The quality of the answers from AI are very much dependent on the quality of the question/prompt used
- The AI generated advice is backward looking and can't necessarily interpret newly passed laws
- While AI generates insights based on the data it has available, it will not necessarily be innovative or creative in its legal reasoning
“… It's analytical and to a degree predictive, but is not innovating in a thought-processing way itself…”
Virginia Briggs as quoted by Hans van Leeuwen, 2024a