“AI,” which stands for “artificial intelligence” is all over the news. AI is essentially computers that automatically learn and become super computers. For example, AI is creating songs that sound remarkably similar to human-created music. AI is taking out the need for humans for many tasks.
Experts predict that millions of American jobs will be replaced by AI. There might be fewer doctors and nurses because AI will scan your medical charts and diagnose you. Will AI replace lawyers?
Probably not. There are two reasons why.
First, legal ethics rules essentially require that a person represented by a lawyer is represented by a licensed lawyer – and, by implication, that is a human lawyer with a real law license. But what about people who represent themselves? Could they harness AI to prepare motions for them? That gets into the second reason why AI will not replace lawyers.
AI lies. At least on occasion. For example, briefs written by AI have been called into question for citing cases that don’t exist. Apparently, the AI computer thought it would be convenient to have a case saying something the computer wanted the case to say. So the computer made it up. It took human lawyers to catch the fictitious cases.
I have a friend who practices an extremely specialized area of law (there are about five other attorneys in the country who practice in this area of law). There are only a handful of cases on this very obscure topic, so my friend knew them all. One of his colleagues asked AI to write a brief on their ultra specialized area of law. AI generated a brief that, overall, was pretty good – but cited “Miller v. U.S.” for a game-changing legal conclusion. My friend thought it was odd that he’d never heard of the case given how few there were in this field of law. However, he quickly realized that “Miller v. U.S.” had been made up by the AI computer.
Lawyer regulatory bodies across the country are drawing up rules to prevent the unverified use of AI. Besides, solving legal problems takes more than citing cases. A lawyer needs to understand human dynamics and draw on his or her life experience to solve legal problems. AI can’t do that.
Lawyers won’t be going away anytime soon.
(This information is of a general nature; exceptions to these general statements might exist. This information is for general educational purposes only; no attorney-client relationship with Overstreet Law Group, LLC is formed unless a person enters into a written representation agreement with the firm.)
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