Concerns about copyright infringement are common concerns for AI applications that generate artificial intelligence. There is more to the story. The unauthorized practice law (UPL) is another issue I wrote about when it first came up in 2012. This issue was brought up by the recent media frenzy surrounding ChatGPT.
Let’s begin with the conclusion: (1) AI apps won’t replace lawyers; (2) Generative AI apps such as ChatGPT will play a limited role in enabling AI computational legal apps, regardless of how powerful they get.
When I started writing this post, ChatGPT asked me the following question: “Can you give legal advice?”
AI can be used to aid in legal research and document analysis but is currently not capable of giving legal advice. Legal advice requires an in-depth knowledge of the law and how it applies to particular situations. It also requires the ability to assess the potential risks and outcomes of various actions. This is a complicated task that requires knowledge and judgement that can only come from a licensed and trained legal professional. While AI can assist in tasks such as finding relevant cases and searching through legal documents, it cannot replace human lawyers’ expertise and judgment. AI could be capable of performing more complicated tasks in the future, such as predicting legal case outcomes, but AI is unlikely to replace human lawyers.
This is a pretty cool idea. The response time was less than 10 seconds. That’s it. It’s easy to see the “seams”, even without looking closely. This response looks like a collection of Google search results glued together. (Google it, you’ll understand what I mean).
ChatGPT is giving us a glimpse of a future in which robot lawyers will replace human lawyers. No. This is unlikely, even if you are optimistic and enthusiastic. Let’s go one step further. We can see that even though the technical requirements can be met, the cost of development is affordable, the usage fee is manageable, and the warranty and liability issues have been addressed, this still is not enough. Trust is what’s missing. Trust is a dispositive variable. It is a dispositive variable that people trust. It is also important to consider whether an AI lawyer should be trusted. How much? In every context, or in limited scenarios? It is obvious that trusting an AI lawyer in a legal dispute with high stakes (you lose, you go to prison) will prove difficult. If the stakes are low enough, as in the case of traffic violations, it should not be difficult to trust an AI app with legal advice. This is already done by DoNotPay.
Let’s now forget about the assumptions and get to the liability questions. UPL is the central issue. UPL liability is very simple for a developer who creates an AI tool that gives legal advice. What if the developer was also a lawyer, or the development was overseen by a lawyer. In these cases, liability for UPL may be avoided.
ChatGPT is an entertaining trick with an undeniable cool element. ChatGPT isn’t about the future without lawyers. ChatGPT is a glimpse of what it might be possible to use ChatGPT in our practice. Similar applications can be found in other legal research tools like Lexis and Westlaw, as well as in Microsoft Word. OpenAI developers need to be careful about allowing their apps access to any activity that is prohibited by law, even if they are not using generative AI apps developed by lawyers.