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Legal and Paralegal Studies Program: Artificial Intelligence

What You Should Know About Artificial Intelligence and Law

Here is some basic information about AI: (For more information about AI see the AI LibGuide)

Lawyers have a duty to: 
   * Competence: Stay up-to-date on AI's benefits and risks, understanding its capabilities and limitations.
   * Confidentiality: Protect client information when using AI tools.
   * Truthful Communication: Be transparent with clients about AI use and avoid misleading statements.

GAI tools raise novel ethical considerations due to their ability to generate new content.
   * Lawyers must stay informed about emerging AI-related ethical issues.
   * Potential for bias in AI exists, and lawyers must take steps to mitigate it.

AI is everywhere from cell phones, to gaming, GPS, and chatbots.
  • There are different types of AI:
    • Artificial Intelligence: Reactive, no memory, task-specific (e.g., recommendations based on customer input)
    • Assisted Intelligence: Requires constant human input and intervention (e.g., GPS systems, speech recognition)
    • Augmented Intelligence: Enhances human capabilities--collaborative (e.g., virtual assistants, analytical tools)
    • Autonomous Intelligence: Independent action--no human intervention or supervision (e.g., Self-driving cars, manufacturing robotics)
The most common tools with which you may be familiar are generative, meaning they create new content.
AI tools can be beneficial in law work.
  • AI tools can be used to:
    • Draft and review legal documents
    • Automate storage and retrieval of legal documents
    • Analyze large amounts of legal data and sources for legal research
    • Quickly review documents
    • Analyze past case law, court decisions, and judge rulings
    • Help to assess potential risks and advise clients
    • Facilitate filing and sorting files, case management, scheduling, and timekeeping. 
    • Assist with reading and summarizing documents, finding patterns and discrepancies, and extracting relevant data
    • Automate routine tasks (billing, scheduling, and client management) 
These tools require text-based instructions, or prompts. This is known as prompt engineering.
  • Here is the CLEAR Framework as a guide for efficient prompting (Leo Lo: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102720)--try to be: 
    • Concise (only the most relevant information)
    • Logical (structured order of the prompt)
    • Explicit (Precise instructions for the results)
    • Adaptive (revise the prompt to get the desired result)
    • Reflective (evaluate, adapt, and adjust your methods)
Care must be taken when using AI tools.
  • AI tools are known to "hallucinate" or generate erroneous results, and there are ethical concerns. As one example, there is a famous case involving two New York lawyers who were sanctioned for using fake ChatGPT cases in a legal brief.1
  • Many AI tools are "trained" using the information that is uploaded into them, which creates issues of security and privacy.
  • Use of information obtained through AI results may be violation of copyright law.

1 Merken, S.(2023, June 26). New York lawyers sanctioned for using fake ChatGPT cases in legal brief. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-york-lawyers-sanctioned-using-fake-chatgpt-cases-legal-brief-2023-06-22/

Consult with your course instructor and syllabus for guidelines on use of AI for course assignments. To find more information about AI in the legal profession, search in the UToledo research databases or Google Scholar with (law OR paralegal OR "legal assistant*") AND ("AI" OR "artificial intelligence")

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