It has been quite a challenge for all of us in the legal and
alternative dispute resolution (ADR) fields to sort through the
hype and potential of AI. Many lawyers and law firms dove in
headfirst, excited about the potential to improve their briefs and
speed legal research, relying primary on products like ChatGPT from
OpenAI, Copilot from Microsoft (based on the same technology) and
Bard from Google. As these platforms vacuumed up vast amounts of
data from the internet, they became increasingly
impressive—and increasingly risky. We have all heard about
lawyers using chat-based tools to augment their writings and
including "hallucinations" such as made-up case
citations.
As those risks became more apparent and frequent, courts,
agencies and legislatures at the federal and state levels in the
U.S. and Europe started drafting and enacting policies and
regulations aimed at maintaining privacy, ensuring proper
disclosure of the use of AI, protecting copyrighted works and
