Artificial Intelligence And Lawyering: Why Machines Can't Do Our Jobs

Just about every week, someone asks one of us how our work is being affected by artificial intelligence ("AI"), and especially about the large language models ("LLMs"), such as ChatGPT, that have become prevalent in everyday life. As commercial litigators, AI has limited application to the work that we do. Certainly, it can be helpful and important in some mechanical tasks, such as document review. However, the current technology is far away from being able to assist us, let alone replace us, in most of what we do. In fact, relying on LLMs to do or help us with much of our work is dangerous and can be unethical. There have been numerous recent examples that demonstrate the danger and how far the technology must advance before commercial litigation lawyers can safely rely on LLMs.