By Kent Berk on April 23rd, 2024 in PROBATE LITIGATION
The question for most in the legal industry is not whether, but “how” can we implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better and more efficiently serve more clients and/or the public.
There are so many chatbots and other AI services that it is almost impossible to keep up with them. And it may not be necessary. I have been experimenting with and using Open AI’s GPT+ (now GPT-4), $20/month, through openai.com.
Most of the advertised AI services are GPT-4 based models that have been specially trained, so for anyone who has not done so already, I recommend that you try GPT-4 or one of the other general AI models, such as Gemini (Google) or Copilot for Microsoft, especially before spending the money to purchase access to a proprietary and usually much more expensive model.
Below, I briefly summarize some of the potential uses of a general use AI model. All of these are subject to applicable legal and ethical requirements (not the subject of this article), and you should read and double check anything AI provides since it makes mistakes.
- Drafting Documents: From pleadings and contracts to wills and trusts, AI can assist in drafting legal documents by providing templates and suggesting language. For example, a client asks you to draft a document you have never prepared before. You could ask AI and it will provide a starting point, similar to accessing a form bank through a print or online service. Except here, AI will have analyzed thousands or more of similar documents to generate a synthesis to generate a custom response based on what it predicts you want.
- Contract Analysis: AI can review and analyze contracts, identifying key clauses, potential issues, and areas for negotiation, thus speeding up (not replacing) manual review. For example, you receive a draft lease from your client, a commercial tenant, from an attorney with whom you’ve never met. As a starting point or after your manual review, you could upload that contact to AI and ask some questions, like, from the perspective of the tenant, are there any clauses missing, can you suggest any clauses, are there any provisions that you recommend revising, is there anything unexpected?
- Legal Education and Training: AI can be used for legal education, offering simple explanations (sometimes simpler than an attorney can provide) on complex legal concepts, recent case law, and statutory changes. So, you want to teach an in-house workshop for your firm on a set of rules, statutes or procedures? You could upload the relevant materials to GPT and ask it to summarize the material, create a list of key takeaways, PowerPoint slides or even a list of key discussion questions.
- Document Reviews and Summaries: Subject to size limitations, you can upload documents to AI and ask it to prepare summaries, timelines, a list of key points or answer specific questions, all in seconds or minutes.
- Legal Marketing Content Creation: AI can generate blog posts, web pages, newsletters, and social media content focused on legal insights, case studies, and firm updates, all custom tailored to the message you want to convey.
- Policies/Procedures: AI can be used to analyze and update or even create firm policy and procedure manuals.
- Employee Reviews: AI can easily generate lists of roles and responsibilities, key performance indicators and evaluation checklists.
- Language Translation: AI can assist in translating legal documents and communications into various languages.
These are just some of AI’s uses for lawyers and those working in the legal industry. Best of all, you can ask AI what it can do for you. Just tell it a little bit about yourself, your practice and your goals and ask if it needs any more information before giving you its suggestions.
Reprinted from the Maricopa Lawyer, May 2024.
