AI for lawyers is more than just legal research

Issue 2

Have you noticed how much of the discourse around AI in the legal industry centers on legal research? It’s easy to see why that this topic has become a major focus in the news. Many of the lawyers who have gotten into trouble using AI have done so by using ChatGPT or another generative AI tool for legal research.  

Legal research is a critical area of competence for lawyers. There is no room for error when you make a legal argument to a court. All lawyers should educate themselves about the possible consequences of blindly trusting a generative AI model for legal research. Generative AI models currently have accuracy-related limitations, and lawyers who use AI are responsible for verifying the results of their research.

And yet, if a non-lawyer were to survey the news about how AI is impacting the legal industry, they would likely have an inflated perception of how much time most lawyers spend conducting legal research. In reality, I don’t know many lawyers who spend a significant portion of their average week on legal research.

Similarly, the concentration of legal news stories on hallucinations and legal research has likely skewed many lawyers’ perceptions on what can and should be done (or should not be done) with currently available AI tools. If you haven’t yet developed your AI competency and you see a slew of news articles about legal research and AI hallucinations, it would be easy for you to generalize that AI for lawyers must be overhyped and not worth the risk.  

We need a more balanced view of the use cases for AI in the legal industry reflecting that lawyers spend their working days performing many tasks besides legal research. (If you are unfamiliar with the term “use case”, it’s a concrete example of how a product or service could be used.) There is significant diversity in legal jobs and the tasks performed in those jobs. The use cases for AI tools developed for lawyers also reflect a wide range of jobs and tasks, with varying degrees of associated risk.

Legal research is merely one of many AI use cases for lawyers. To help you envision what might be done with AI tools that have been developed for the legal industry, I’ve created a free resource that includes 50 possible use cases for AI tools developed for the legal industry. If you haven’t already downloaded this resource, please feel free to grab it here.

This is not to say that now is the time for all lawyers to start using AI. Rather, now is the time for all lawyers to begin developing their AI competency. AI competency is a necessary prerequisite to using AI as a lawyer if you want to avoid unnecessary risks and pitfalls and know when the time is right to seize opportunities. It's the difference between proactively doing the work to understand the AI issues impacting lawyers, and reactively scrambling when an unanticipated AI issue arises in your practice. For more on the topic of proactively developing your AI competency, check out the next issue of my newsletter. 

I do think a time is likely coming, more quickly than some lawyers would like, when using AI becomes the status quo. Some early adopting lawyers are already figuring out how to use AI tools to their competitive advantage. AI is anticipated to continue to improve in quality and accuracy, and you don’t want to wait to start understanding and exploring it until it’s so good that your competitors are using it to outcompete you.

As for those lawyers who want to stay ahead of the curve and are eager to explore using AI in their practices, make sure that you reduce your risk by building strong foundational knowledge about AI issues impacting lawyers before you start considering AI tools.

If you’re still skeptical about the likelihood of AI’s ability to improve your practice, please hold on to that skepticism, as it would serve you well in evaluating AI tools and using AI. The only way to know for sure if AI is worthwhile is to consider the possibilities in good faith…after you’ve developed your AI competency, of course.

Thanks for being here.

Jennifer
www.goodjourneyconsulting.com  

P.S. In case you missed it, A Lawyer's Practical Guide to AI is now available for preorder! If you’re ready to get up to speed on AI now, you can do it faster with the guide, which covers:

• The rise of generative AI,
• Issues with AI impacting lawyers,
• Professional responsibility considerations for lawyers,
• AI-related lawyer misconduct cases,
• Notable AI cases and governmental actions,
• A step-by-step process to evaluate and adopt AI tools in your practice, and
• A directory of over 150 AI tools developed for the legal industry categorized by capability, practice area, and integrations with other AI tools.

You can get the guide here.