The judicial system is notoriously slow, expensive, and cumbersome. Government and industry regulations are often baroque in their complexity.

If developed and deployed with care, AI could make many processes faster, more affordable, more transparent, and easier for non-experts to understand. This would dramatically expand access to justice. It could also point out inconsistencies, reveal biases, and measure long-term results, to make the entire system more fair, accurate, and effective. Such changes would improve the lives of millions of people.

However, AI tools also introduce new risks around bias, privacy, job disruption, and public trust that must be addressed. On the individual level, the lawyers and firms most likely to thrive in this changing environment will be those who can successfully integrate AI to enhance their work while mitigating downsides. On an industry-wide level, the legal profession must guide the spread of AI responsibly by promoting transparency, oversight, and ethics around data and algorithms.

Predicting Changes Ahead

In our survey, most respondents said they expected the effects of AI on the practice of law will exceed our current expectations.

73% think it will meet or exceed expectations, while 27% expect it to fall short of expectations.

Looking Forward: Most Effective Uses for AI in Legal

Lawyers surveyed said they believed language model technologies would be most effective with tasks around finding data, summarizing content, creating insights, and generating legal work.

For each scenario below, rate how effective you believe Large Language Models/LLMs like ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, or others could be in assisting you or others in the legal field with the given task

Hopes

Lawyers surveyed responded that they expected AI to improve their productivity, make their work more efficient, and enhance their interactions with clients.

Productivity

AI models can multiply the productivity of legal professionals. Work that used to eat up hours of their time and racked up outsourcing expenses can now be done in seconds. AI opens up the possibilities of less paperwork and more legal work.

  • Generate first drafts of legal documents.
  • Summarize and highlight important details in large volumes of text.
  • Answer basic legal questions.

Work efficiency

Organizations that have adopted AI already report meaningful cost decreases and revenue increases, according to the Artificial Intelligence Index Report.

  • Automate routine, repetitive tasks like research, document review, and drafting.
  • Open up more time to focus on higher-level critical thinking work that truly benefits from human judgment and expertise.

Client Interactions

Lawyers can improve their client interactions and better serve their needs using AI in several ways:

  • As a risk mitigation tool, AI catches and prevents costly human errors. It's feasible that in the future, cautious clients won't hire firms that aren't equipped to use AI to mitigate risks.
  • AI assistants and chatbots offer 24/7 access to basic legal information and FAQs which provides clients with convenient self-service options.
  • Natural language processing models can analyze client communications to gain useful insights into common questions and concerns that help lawyers develop more targeted, valuable guidance.
  • Systems that can automatically generate early drafts of documents like contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and demand letters reduce turnaround time, cut down on the costs that are passed to clients, and free lawyers to concentrate on more complex aspects of these communications.

Concerns

All new technologies engender new risks. Lawyers surveyed cited that their biggest concerns were the effects that AI would have on personal privacy, legal ethics, data security, and employment opportunities.

Legal Ethics

Some lawyers may be concerned that outsourcing the creation of legal products to generative AI could run afoul of ethics rules in some jurisdictions. There's also the issue of "hallucination," where AI delivers results that are plausible but untrue.

In a recent lawsuit against an airline company, a lawyer relied on ChatGPT for his legal research. The chatbot provided a number of case citations and quotations for a legal brief, which the lawyer used without verifying. None of them were, in fact, real.

Personal privacy

As more data is collected through AI tools, it can be increasingly difficult to protect personal information. AI tools can also analyze information in unprecedented predictive ways, while bad actors can also use them to target individuals.

Data security

AI tools could be susceptible to data breaches, creating new areas of risk for organizations. They can also be deployed by nefarious actors to generate phishing emails and calls.

Employment opportunities

Finally, lawyers worry that new tools will make some legal workers obsolete, as their position is replaced by automation software.

To mitigate these risks while benefiting from AI, legal professionals will need to leverage trusted tools with strong security safeguards, privacy protections, and careful design that facilitates adherence to legal ethics.