How will generative AI impact lawyer training? What percentage chance is there that we will see a total transformation of the legal sector because of this new form of AI? Will the billable hour prevent (at least for now) law firms fully making use of the technology? And of course, will we see a reduction in lawyers in inhouse roles and at external advisers – and if so, what roles will be most affected?
All of these questions and more are discussed in this webinar recorded earlier this month. In the live discussion, Richard Tromans, Founder of Artificial Lawyer, talks to Daniel Lewis, the Founder of one of the first legal AI companies, RAVEL, which pioneered legal research, which was then sold to LexisNexis. He is now US CEO of LegalOn. We also take plenty of questions from the audience.
Please press play to watch:
Other issues discussed include:
- That there is a real and significant difference between ‘raw’ output of an LLM such as ChatGPT and legal tech tools that have built-in guardrails that use LLM technology to ensure that hallucinations don’t get accepted as a valid output.
- That law firms ‘banning AI’ is unworkable, as many legal tech companies already use both NLP and LLM technology, including some of the largest providers than many law firms now depend upon. But, not using ChatGPT ‘in the raw’ for anything work-related does make sense.
- How we have been here before in terms of many of the key subjects people are focusing on. It’s a déjà vu of 2015/2016 in many ways, but this time it’s not ‘traditional’ NLP, it’s LLM technology.
- That what we see today with LLMs in the legal tech field is mostly just trying to do the same things legal tech companies have been doing for some years, e.g. automated review of contracts, automated redlining, and improved case research. And perhaps that’s the way to see LLM tech, i.e. not as some massive change, but rather as an adoption of new technology to improve outputs that we were already working on via other means.
- And, do we really need exams in the current educational environment, at least once you get past 18? Shouldn’t we be focusing on helping students to think rather than regurgitate information and standard views, which generative AI now can do easily?
P.S. Thanks very much to Daniel and team, and the audience for all the great questions.
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Conference News
Legal Innovators UK – November 8/9 London
We are back in November for Legal Innovators UK! The landmark conference for anyone focused on the cutting edge of legal innovation and legal technology.
Once again the event will be over two days: Law firms and ALSPs, then Inhouse and Legal Ops.
For more information and tickets please see here.
