legislatures / government / legal

ChatGPT and AI Applications for In-house Lawyers [Jefferson]

On 03/27/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, by Daniel Christian

ChatGPT and AI Applications for In-house Lawyers — from docket.acc.com by Spiwe L. Jefferson

Excerpt:

The explosive emergence of ChatGPT as a consumer tool has catapulted Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its subfield, natural language processing (NLP), to the technology stage. As AI and NLP continue to evolve, the use of AI-powered tools, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), in the legal industry has become increasingly prevalent. Many lawyers are experimenting with AI and grappling with its applications to streamline practices and improve efficiency.

While GPT and other AI-powered tools can potentially revolutionize aspects of the legal profession, it is important to consider the current limitations and potential pitfalls in implementing these technologies.

017 | Post-Event Learnings w/ AI Prompts |Brainyacts #17 — from thebrainyacts.beehiiv.com

Excerpt:

Earlier this week some of you were at Legalweek in New York. Others of you joined Terri Mottershead and the Centre for Legal Innovation to talk about what consultants think about ChatGPT/Generative AI.

Far too many of us attend these events and never take the time to invest in ourselves and our organizations by capturing our learnings and insights.

In fact, I will go a step further.

If your organization paid for you to go, there is an obligation to transfer your personal experience into one that benefits the organization. Sort of a return on investment for the $ and time away from the office.

From DSC:
While I continue to try and review/pulse-check the K12 learning ecosystem, it struck me that we need new, DIRECT communication channels between educators, support staff, administrators, and legislators — and possibly others.

That is:

How can teachers, support staff, and administrators talk directly to legislators?
How can legislators communicate with teachers, support staff, and administrators?
Should we require relevant legislators (i.e., those individuals sponsoring bills or major changes to our k12 learning ecosystem) to go through training on how students learn?
What communication vehicles are present? Can they be anonymous?
Should there be an idea 1-800 hotline or an idea “mailbox” (digital and/or analog based)?

And what about the students themselves and/or their parents/guardians? Should they be involved as well?

Law has a magic wand now — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Some people think Large Language Models will transform the practice of law. I think it’s bigger than that.

Excerpts:

ChatGPT4 can also do things that only lawyers (used to be able to) do. It can look up and summarize a court decision, analyze and apply sections of copyright law, and generate a statement of claim for breach of contract.
…
What happens when you introduce a magic wand into the legal market? On the buyer side, you reduce by a staggering degree the volume of tasks that you need to pay lawyers (whether in-house or outside counsel) to perform. It won’t happen overnight: Developing, testing, revising, approving, and installing these sorts of systems in corporations will take time. But once that’s done, the beauty of LLMs like ChatGPT4 is that they are not expert systems. Anyone can use them. Anyone will.

But I can’t shake the feeling that someday, we’ll divide the history of legal services into “Before GPT4” and “After GPT4.” I think it’s that big.

From DSC:
Jordan mentions: “Some people think Large Language Models will transform the practice of law. I think it’s bigger than that.”

I agree with Jordan. It most assuredly IS bigger than that. AI will profoundly impact many industries/disciplines. The legal sector is but one of them. Education is another. People’s expectations are now changing — and the “ramification wheels” are now in motion.

I take the position that many others have as well (at least as of this point in time) that take the position that AI will supplement humans’ capabilities and activities. But those who know AI-driven apps will outcompete those who don’t know about such apps.

How AI will revolutionize the practice of law [Villasenor]

On 03/22/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, ideas, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

How AI will revolutionize the practice of law — from brookings.edu by John Villasenor

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to fundamentally reshape the practice of law.

Excerpt:

BROADENING ACCESS TO LEGAL SERVICES
AI also has the potential to dramatically broaden access to legal services, which are prohibitively expensive for many individuals and small businesses. As the Center for American Progress has written, “[p]romoting equal, meaningful access to legal representation in the U.S. justice system is critical to ending poverty, combating discrimination, and creating opportunity.”

AI will make it much less costly to initiate and pursue litigation. For instance, it is now possible with one click to automatically generate a 1000-word lawsuit against robocallers. More generally, drafting a well-written complaint will require more than a single click, but in some scenarios, not much more. These changes will make it much easier for law firms to expand services to lower-income clients.

Reflections on “Policy by Waivers Won’t Boost School Innovation” [Horn]

On 03/18/2023, in change, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, ideas, innovation, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, legislatures / government / legal, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, teachers, United States, by Daniel Christian

Policy by Waivers Won’t Boost School Innovation — by Michael B. Horn
“Permissionless” beats having to ask for an okay

Excerpt:

In recent conversations, educators and state policymakers have expressed shock to me that district schools aren’t innovating more. With microschools growing and test scores floundering, why aren’t districts seeking permission to reinvent themselves?

As evidence of the opportunities to innovate, many bureaucrats and think tanks point to the vast number of waivers that states offer. The opportunities to move beyond traditional structures and processes do exist, the argument goes.

Yet waivers help far less than most policymakers believe. Until regulators create frameworks where innovation in pursuit of student outcomes is the default and doesn’t require permission, don’t expect a sea change.

From DSC:
TrimTab Groups. That’s what we need more of within K-12 and higher education.

Research shows the only way an organization can truly reinvent itself is to launch a separate organization that has the autonomy to rethink its value proposition, resources, processes, and financial formula.

Below is a graphic I created a while back, but with traditional institutions of higher education in mind.

We need more Trim Tab Groups within K-12 and Higher Education.

“Legal Prompt Engineering – Examples and Tips” [law.mit.edu] plus other AI-related items within the legal realm

On 03/16/2023, in Legal operations, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, UK, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Legal Prompt Engineering – Examples and Tips — from law.mit.edu by Dazza Greenwood and Damien Riehl
Walk through and discussion of Legal Prompt Engineering examples, showing ways to compose inputs to generative AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude to get improved outputs for law and legal processes

GPT4 demo’s last 5 mins should be a must watch for legal / tax folks!

Spoiler Alert: snippet of US tax code is used + a fictional set of facts, and GPT asked to determine the appropriate tax calculation + reasoning, which it seemingly does correctly.https://t.co/rthFsTCUic

— lawtomated (@lawtomated) March 14, 2023

PwC announces strategic alliance with Harvey, positioning PwC’s Legal Business Solutions at the forefront of legal generative AI — from pwc.com

Excerpt:

LONDON, 15 March 2023 – Today, PwC announced a global partnership with artificial intelligence (AI) startup Harvey, providing PwC’s Legal Business Solutions professionals exclusive access (among the Big 4) to the game-changing AI platform.

Harvey, which is backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, is built on OpenAi and Chat GPT technology. It is a platform that uses natural language processing, machine learning and data analytics to automate and enhance various aspects of legal work. Harvey will help generate insights and recommendations based on large volumes of data, delivering richer information that will enable PwC professionals to identify solutions faster. All outputs will be overseen and reviewed by PwC professionals.

The strategic alliance builds on PwC’s ability to bring human-led and tech-enabled solutions to clients, delivering on its global strategy, The New Equation.

The Robot Lawyer Resistance — from a16z Podcast by Andreessen Horowitz

Description of podcast:

Should AI belong in the courtroom? Joshua Browder ventured to run an experiment where a robot lawyer would defend a court case. Looking to up the ante, he even offered $1m for a Supreme Court hearing! His experiment was met with a threat of 6 months jail time. Listen in for the full story.

Also somewhat related, see:

What’s New in Legal Technology? ABA TECHSHOW 2023 — from attorneyatwork.com by Joan Feldman
ABA TECHSHOW has been the place to learn what’s new in legal technology for more than 35 years. Last week in Chicago, we scoped out the ABA TECHSHOW 2023 exposition hall. Here are a few of the highlights.

“The teacher shortage, and the profession itself, are finally getting the attention it needs.” [Green]

On 03/16/2023, in career development, change, education, education reform, future, K-12 related, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, reinvent, society, student-related, teachers, youth, by Daniel Christian

Fostering sustainable learning ecosystems [Blessinger]

On 03/13/2023, in 21st century, Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, change, collaboration, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, culture, curriculum, education, education technology, Europe, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, higher education, ideas, informal learning, instructional design, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, platforms, policy, society, strategy, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Fostering sustainable learning ecosystems — from linkedin.com by Patrick Blessinger

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Learning ecosystems
As today’s global knowledge society becomes increasingly interconnected and begins to morph into a global learning society, it is likely that formal, nonformal, and informal learning will become increasingly interconnected. For instance, there has been an explosion of new self-directed e-learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Open Courseware, and YouTube, among others, that help educate billions of people around the world.

A learning ecosystem includes all the elements that contribute to a learner’s overall learning experience. The components of a learning ecosystem are numerous, including people, technology platforms, knowledge bases, culture, governance, strategy, and other internal and external elements that have an impact on learning. Therefore, moving forward, it is crucial to integrate learning across formal, nonformal, and informal learning processes and activities in a more strategic way.

Working To Incorporate Legal Technology Into Your Practice Isn’t Just A Great Business Move – It’s Required [Williams]

On 03/11/2023, in 21st century, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Canada, experimentation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Working To Incorporate Legal Technology Into Your Practice Isn’t Just A Great Business Move – It’s Required — from abovethelaw.com by Chris Williams

Excerpt:

According to Model Rule 1.1 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct: “A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”

In 2012, the ABA House of Delegates voted to amend Comment 8 to Model Rule 1.1 to include explicit guidance on lawyers’ use of technology.

If Model Rule 1.1 isn’t enough of a motivator to dip your feet in legal tech, maybe paying off that mortgage is. As an extra bit of motivation, it may benefit you to pin the ABA House of Delegate’s call to action on your motivation board.

Also relevant/see:

While courts still use fax machines, law firms are using AI to tailor arguments for judges — from cbc.ca by Robyn Schleihauf

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

What is different with AI is the scale by which this knowledge is aggregated. While a lawyer who has been before a judge three or four times may have formed some opinions about them, these opinions are based on anecdotal evidence. AI can read the judge’s entire history of decision-making and spit out an argument based on what it finds.

The common law has always used precedents, but what is being used here is different — it’s figuring out how a judge likes an argument to be framed, what language they like using, and feeding it back to them.

And because the legal system builds on itself — with judges using prior cases to determine how a decision should be made in the case before them — these AI-assisted arguments from lawyers could have the effect of further entrenching a judge’s biases in the case law, as the judge’s words are repeated verbatim in more and more decisions. This is particularly true if judges are unaware of their own biases.

Cutting through the noise: The impact of GPT/large language models (and what it means for legal tech vendors) — from legaltechnology.com by Caroline Hill

Excerpts:

Given that we have spent time over the past few years telling people not to get to overestimate the capability of AI, is this the real deal?

“Yeah, I think it’s the real thing because if you look at why legal technologies have not had the adoption rate historically, language has always been the problem,” Katz said. “Language has been hard for machines historically to work with, and language is core to law. Every road leads to a document, essentially.”
…
Katz says: “There are two types of things here. They would call general models GPT one through four, and then there’s domain models, so a legal specific large language model.
…
“What we’re going to see are large-ish, albeit not the largest model that’s heavily domain tailored is going to beat a general model in the same way that a really smart person can’t beat a super specialist. That’s where the value creation and the next generation of legal technology is going to live.”

Fresh Voices in Legal Tech with Kristen Sonday — from legaltalknetwork.com by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell with Kristen Sonday

DC: This doesn’t surprise me. But it’s yet another example of opaqueness involving technology

On 03/07/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, digital photography, digital video, ethics, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, society, the downsides of how people use tech, United States, by Daniel Christian

FBI, Pentagon helped research facial recognition for street cameras, drones — from washingtonpost.com by Drew Harwell
Internal documents released in response to a lawsuit show the government was deeply involved in pushing for face-scanning technology that could be used for mass surveillance

Excerpt:

The FBI and the Defense Department were actively involved in research and development of facial recognition software that they hoped could be used to identify people from video footage captured by street cameras and flying drones, according to thousands of pages of internal documents that provide new details about the government’s ambitions to build out a powerful tool for advanced surveillance.

From DSC:
This doesn’t surprise me. But it’s yet another example of opaqueness involving technology. And who knows to what levels our Department of Defense has taken things with AI, drones, and robotics.

‘ChatGPT Already Outperforms a lot of Junior Lawyers’: An Interview With Richard Susskind — from law.com by Laura Beveridge
For the last 20 years, the U.K. author and academic has been predicting that technology will revolutionise the legal industry. With the buzz around generative AI, will his hypothesis now be proven true?

Excerpts:

For this generation of lawyers, their mission and legacy ought to be to build the systems that replace our old ways of working, he said. Moreover, Susskind identified new work for lawyers, such as legal process analyst or legal data scientist, emerging from technological advancement.

“These are the people who will be building the systems that will be solving people’s legal problems in the future.

“The question I ask is: imagine when the underpinning large language model is GPT 8.5.”

Blue J Legal co-founder Benjamin Alarie on how AI is powering a new generation of legal tech — from canadianlawyermag.com by Tim Wilbur

Excerpts:

We founded Blue J with the idea that we should be able to bring absolute clarity to the law everywhere and on demand. The name that we give to this idea is the legal singularity. I have a book with assistant professor Abdi Aidid called The Legal Singularity coming out soon on this idea.

The book paints the picture of where we think the law will go in the next several decades. Our intuition was not widely shared when we started the book and Blue J.

Since last November, though, many lawyers and journalists have been able to play with ChatGPT and other large language models. They suddenly understand what we have been excited about for the last eight years.

Neat Trick/Tip to Add To Your Bag! — from iltanet.org by Brian Balistreri

Excerpt:

If you need instant transcription of a Audio File, Word Online now allows you to upload a file, and it will transcribe, mark speaker changes, and provide time marks. You can use video files, just make sure they are small or office will kick you out.

Generative AI Is Coming For the Lawyers — from wired.com by Chris Stoken-Walker
Large law firms are using a tool made by OpenAI to research and write legal documents. What could go wrong?

Excerpts:

The rise of AI and its potential to disrupt the legal industry has been forecast multiple times before. But the rise of the latest wave of generative AI tools, with ChatGPT at its forefront, has those within the industry more convinced than ever.

“I think it is the beginning of a paradigm shift,” says Wakeling. “I think this technology is very suitable for the legal industry.”
…
The technology, which uses large datasets to learn to generate pictures or text that appear natural, could be a good fit for the legal industry, which relies heavily on standardized documents and precedents.

“Legal applications such as contract, conveyancing, or license generation are actually a relatively safe area in which to employ ChatGPT and its cousins,” says Lilian Edwards, professor of law, innovation, and society at Newcastle University. “Automated legal document generation has been a growth area for decades, even in rule-based tech days, because law firms can draw on large amounts of highly standardized templates and precedent banks to scaffold document generation, making the results far more predictable than with most free text outputs.”

But the problems with current generations of generative AI have already started to show.

Meet CoCounsel — “the world’s first AI legal assistant” [casetext]

On 03/02/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Meet CoCounsel — “the world’s first AI legal assistant” — from casetext.com

Excerpt:

As we shared in our official press release, we’ve been collaborating with OpenAI to build CoCounsel on their latest, most advanced large language model. It was a natural fit between our two teams. OpenAI, the world leader in generative AI, selected Casetext to create a product powered by its technology that was suitable for professional use by lawyers. Our experience leading legal tech since 2013 and applying large language models to the law for over five years made us an ideal choice.

From DSC:
I look forward to seeing more vendors and products getting into the legaltech space — ones that use AI and other technologies to make significant progress on the access to justice issues that we have here in the United States.

“The 2022 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report” + other legal related items

On 03/02/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, blogs / blogging / vlogging, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, by Daniel Christian

How Does Your Firm Stack Up When It Comes To Legal Tech? A Look Through the 2022 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report — from jdsupra.com

Excerpt:

The 2022 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report measures current legal technology trends. How does your firm compare to the rest?

Lawyers are rarely accused of rushing into change, but current legal technology trends show a few glimmers of hope that (slowly but surely) law firms are realizing the significance of incorporating technology into their litigation practice to remain relevant and competitive. The 2022 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report: Vol. 5 – Litigation Technology & E-Discovery reveals that law firms went through a belt-tightening phase in 2020 and 2021 but then made investments in 2022 to improve their litigation offerings.

ChatGPT Writes Our February 2023 FPI Newsletter Blog Post — from .law.upenn.edu by the Future of the Profession Initiative (FPI) at Penn Carey Law

Excerpt:

For our February 2023 FPI Newsletter, we used ChatGPT, the advanced chatbot, to help us write this blog post. Below, our prompts are in bold, with ChatGPT responses following.

Write the introduction to a newsletter focused on the legal implications of ChatGPT. Include implications for legal education, law firms, and clients.

Trends and Highlights from the 2023 Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report — from lawtechnologytoday.org Taylor Young

Excerpt:

Earlier this month, Actionstep released the results of the 2023 Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report, an inaugural survey of legal and administrative staff from midsize US law firms focused on identifying their key priorities, challenges, goals, and opportunities heading into 2023.

Trends and insights that rose to the top…

23 Legal Tech Insights for 2023 — New Report with Input from Industry Experts — from lawtechnologytoday.org Taylor Young

Excerpt:

If you are in legal tech, change is constant. This means staying on top of emerging trends (yes, even beyond the latest ChatGPT craze) is vital — not because you need to sign up for every new, shiny thing, but because you want to harness the advantages technology creates and prepare your organization for the future. That’s why tech-savvy practitioners will soon be heading to the ABA TECHSHOW.

As you head into conference-mode to dig into the latest in legal technology at TECHSHOW, our team thought this is the perfect time to share trends and industry insights to give you some food for thought and areas to investigate at the show.

Last year, we shared 10 legal tech trends driving success in the legal industry. Because what we shared was so well received, we’ve expanded the content with our latest report, 23 Legal Technology Insights for 2023, which includes thoughtful analysis of major trends, comments from industry experts, and tips to help you make the most of the tech in your organization. Here’s a snapshot of some of the key technology trends for 2023.

Planning for AGI and beyond — from OpenAI.org by Sam Altman

Excerpt:

There are several things we think are important to do now to prepare for AGI.

First, as we create successively more powerful systems, we want to deploy them and gain experience with operating them in the real world. We believe this is the best way to carefully steward AGI into existence—a gradual transition to a world with AGI is better than a sudden one. We expect powerful AI to make the rate of progress in the world much faster, and we think it’s better to adjust to this incrementally.

A gradual transition gives people, policymakers, and institutions time to understand what’s happening, personally experience the benefits and downsides of these systems, adapt our economy, and to put regulation in place. It also allows for society and AI to co-evolve, and for people collectively to figure out what they want while the stakes are relatively low.

*AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence

Learning Ecosystems

“Legal Prompt Engineering – Examples and Tips” [law.mit.edu] plus other AI-related items within the legal realm

Working To Incorporate Legal Technology Into Your Practice Isn’t Just A Great Business Move – It’s Required [Williams]

DC: This doesn’t surprise me. But it’s yet another example of opaqueness involving technology

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