Samuel Edwards
November 15, 2023
AI is already beginning to reshape the legal profession, arguably for the better.With the help of generative AI tools, especially conversational AI, lawyers can hypothetically get more work done and get it done faster. And they might even benefit from an increase in the quality of their finished work.That said, we're still in the early stages of developing AI for lawyers and understanding the context in which it can be used.One of the most common applications of conversational AI for lawyers is in legal writing. If AI is used, does it empirically make legal writing faster? Does it make legal writing better? Is it capable of doing both?Let's explore.
Generative AI can be used for a wide variety of legal writing tasks, including drafting contracts and client memos. Essentially, a lawyer can input any question they have and receive an answer, or issue a prompt and have the AI generate a section of content for the lawyer to review.Modern generative AI tools can be used for:
If used properly and to its fullest potential, the positive impact of generative AI in legal writing could be enormous.The most obvious benefit is that generative AI saves time. It can greatly reduce the number of hours you need to spend researching and produce large sections of legal documents in a matter of minutes. Granted, not all of this research or produced content is going to be perfect, but it doesn't have to be; as long as it's properly reviewed, the time saving benefits are more than enough to justify its use.Of course, in some cases, it's possible for conversational AI to exceed specific human capabilities in terms of quality as well. Quality is a bit subjective and hard to judge, but it's not unreasonable to speculate that at least some of the content produced by these tools it's better than at least some of the content produced by human lawyers.To better answer the question of the “true” potential for generative AI in legal writing, we would need to see more empirical data.Fortunately, this data is rapidly becoming available.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Minnesota Law School titled Lawyering in the Age of Artificial Intelligence sought to explore the central question of this article: is conversational AI capable of legal writing faster and/or better than human writers?The study followed 60 students from the University of Minnesota Law School. Each student was assigned 4 different legal writing tasks:
Students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one of these groups wrote the pieces entirely independently, while the other group used GPT-4 for assistance. Students who used GPT-4 were trained on how to use the program before drafting their works.After the works were completed, researchers blind-graded the results and evaluated the time it took to draft each assignment.Unsurprisingly, students who used GPT-4 were significantly faster than their counterparts. There were “large and consistent increases in speed.” However, access to generative AI “slightly and inconsistently improved the quality of participants’ legal analysis.” In other words, the gains in terms of quality were significantly lower and less consistent.Additionally, there were some identifiable patterns in the role that GPT-4 played in producing the work. GPT-4 was not equally useful across all tasks. Among the tasks for which GPT-4 was useful, it was measurably more useful in improving the quality of work for lower-skilled participants.This is, perhaps, to be expected. Imagine that in terms of quality and experience, lawyers can be rated on a scale of 1 to 100. If GPT-4 is hypothetically rated at a 75, it's going to be much more useful for improving the work quality of lawyers who are currently rated a 40 than it is for improving the work quality of lawyers who are currently rated an 85.It's also interesting to note that AI assistance was able to produce speed improvements with close to universal uniformity. It helped all students somewhat equally, regardless of their baseline speed.One additional result found by the study was that students were generally satisfied with using AI for assistance with legal tasks. Students were able to appropriately assess the strengths of AI and successfully predicted the tasks at which this tool would be best suited.The researchers suggest that this study provides evidence that law schools should thoughtfully consider the possibility of teaching law students how to use AI appropriately. There are also implications for how legal matters are handled and billed.
So what are the major implications for generative AI in legal writing, in light of these new findings?
Are you interested in learning more about how AI can be used to improve your legal writing?Or are you ready to build and adopt a legal writing AI tool in your law firm?We can help. Contact us for a free consultation today!
Samuel Edwards is CMO of Law.co and its associated agency. Since 2012, Sam has worked with some of the largest law firms around the globe. Today, Sam works directly with high-end law clients across all verticals to maximize operational efficiency and ROI through artificial intelligence. Connect with Sam on Linkedin.
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