'The Calculator Mistake': Denial, hostility won't help lawyers deal with emergence of AI; ABA Journal, October 23, 2024

TRACY HRESKO PEARL , ABA Journal; 'The Calculator Mistake': Denial, hostility won't help lawyers deal with emergence of AI

"There are two ways to deal with this kind of uncertainty. The first is denial and hostility. Legal news outlets have been filled with articles in recent months about the problems with AI-generated legal briefs. Such briefs may contain fake citations. They miss important points. They lack nuance.

The obvious solution, when the problem is framed in this way, is to point lawyers away from using AI, impose strong sanctions on attorneys who misuse it, and redouble law school exam security and anti-plagiarism measures to ensure that law students are strongly disincentivized from using these new forms of technology. “Old school” law practice and legal teaching techniques, in this view, should continue to be the gold standard of our profession.

The problem, of course, is that technology gets better and does so at an increasingly (and sometimes alarmingly) rapid rate. No lawyer worth their salt would dare turn in an AI-generated legal brief now, given the issues listed above and the potential consequences. But we are naive to think that the technology won’t eventually overtake even the most gifted of legal writers.

That point may not be tomorrow; it may not be five years from now. But that time is coming, and when it does, denial and hostility won’t get us around the fact that it may no longer be in the best interests of our clients for a lawyer to write briefs on their own. Denial and hostility won’t help us deal with what, at that point, will be a serious existential threat to our profession.

The second way to deal with the uncertainty of emerging technology is to recognize that profound change is inevitable and then do the deeper, tougher and more philosophical work of discerning how humans can still be of value in a profession that, like nearly every other, will cede a great deal of ground to AI in the not-too-distant future. What will it mean to be a lawyer, a judge or a law professor in that world? What should it mean?

I am increasingly convinced that the answers to those questions are in so-called soft skills and critical thinking."