“Hey, ChatGPT. Show me how to succeed as a lawyer.”
Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. ChatGPT was launched in November 2022 and quickly became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history.
But it brought with it concerns about plagiarism, misinformation and even the replacement of human intelligence.
Noted linguist Noam Chomsky said ChatGPT doesn’t have “anything to do with education except undermining it.”
But others have embraced its potential.
“AI is the biggest innovation we’ve seen in a generation,” said Jack Newton, founder and CEO of Clio, a legal software provider. “It’s an advancement as significant as the invention of the transistor or the PC.
“Ultimately, this isn’t a matter of AI replacing lawyers any more than spreadsheets replaced accountants. AI won’t make lawyers irrelevant. But those who embrace it will dominate over those who do not.”
Without question, this is an unprecedented time for the confluence of technology and education. And law schools are caught up in the excitement and anxiety.
“It’s all so new; it’s all developing,” said Susan Tanner, who teaches legal writing at University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in Kentucky. “No one has 20 years of expertise in using ChatGPT to write a brief.”
Tanner is an early adopter of generative AI tools, specifically ChatGPT, which is short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. She encourages law students to learn about the technology’s capabilities and limitations.
After all, like it or not, AI is changing law school and the legal profession.
A recent study by Thomson Reuters showed that 56% of large law firms expect AI to become mainstream in the practice of law within the next five years. And Goldman Sachs has estimated that AI could automate 44% of the tasks done by legal professionals.
But while most agree on the role generative AI will play in law in the future, few agree on how to get there, particularly law schools, which are trying to decide whether machine learning should have a place in student learning.
So, what are law schools and students to do to prepare? Can AI be used safely while not diminishing the human side of law? How do law schools teach prospective lawyers the basics of AI so it’s useful, accurate and ethical?
It’s uncharted territory. And while the American Bar Association has formed a task force of lawyers and tech experts to study the effects and ethical implications of AI on the practice of law, few expect the world to wait for the ABA’s report.
Defining the role of AI
Law schools are a little lost when it comes to AI, and they’re choosing a variety of paths. The conundrum starts as early as the admissions process.
University of Michigan Law School explicitly banned applicants from using GenAI for admission essays. But Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has invited prospective students to use AI tools in the name of inclusivity.
A survey by Kaplan found that 66% of pre-law students don’t think schools should allow applicants to use AI in writing admission essays.
Kirsten Davis, who teaches legal ethics, research and writing at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida, said her school is grappling with how to implement and monitor the use of AI by students.
“My policy right now is we’re going to use it,” she said. “We’re going to see what the possibilities are for writing and try to best understand the risks and benefits of it.”
Davis teaches an upper-level legal writing class that encourages the use of GenAI. She has also assembled a cohort of 150 legal writing professors from around the United States to participate in Zoom discussions about AI’s place in law school.
“We’re going to have to figure out ways to use it ethically and practically, and in ways that ensure that students still know how to write well,” Davis said. She said the group has discussed
whether professors still rely on students’ out-of-class writing assessments when GenAI is so readily available, and also how to cite AI when it is used.
Three writing-style guides — the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), the MLA Handbook and The Chicago Manual of Style — have taken early positions on how to cite GenAI. All emphasize that if an AI tool is used, it must be acknowledged somewhere in the text. MLA recommends against citing a chatbot as an author, but APA and The Chicago Manual of Style suggest ways to format citations of ChatGPT or OpenAI authored material.
“It really depends on how you think of it,” Davis said. “Is it a tool? Is it more like a person? Is it more like informal news? If I speak with a colleague or have a colleague read a paper and get their thoughts, I’ll put them in the ‘thank you’ line. I think there are lots of ways of conceptualizing it.”
She said the field of law is so focused on authority that the question is significant.
AI around the nation
LexisNexis announced in December that Lexis+ AI, its generative artificial intelligence platform, will become available to 100,000 second- and third-year law and master of laws students at ABA-accredited law schools in the spring semester.
The rollout follows a test run in the fall during which 450 law school librarians, legal research and writing instructors and legal technology professors were given access to the platform, which supports conversational search, intelligent legal drafting, insightful summarization and document analysis.
The company is gathering feedback from faculty and students that will guide the application’s refinement as it becomes available in classrooms.
Harvard Law School and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society launched the Initiative on Artificial Intelligence and the Law (IAIL) last July.
The initiative will focus on new challenges and opportunities for the law created by the rise of artificial intelligence.
Based at the Berkman Klein Center, the IAIL will be overseen by an advisory board consisting of law school faculty. The initiative will sponsor and promote new work on these topics by both faculty and students, hold conferences and symposia and issue preliminary reports on emerging topics.
Vanderbilt University Law School introduced a new AI Legal Lab in January that will seek to discover how artificial intelligence comes into play with access to justice and rendering legal services.
The new lab resides within Vanderbilt’s Program on Law & Innovation. It aims to learn how to use AI in a way that enhances how legal services are executed. Through the lab, students will explore how to navigate the new AI landscape — including ethical uses — and foster partnerships.
In an attempt to make the AI Legal Lab as comprehensive as possible, Vanderbilt Law has collaborated with individuals from the university’s strategic learning programs and computer science department along with external partners.
