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Rethinking legal education in the AI era

law.uchicago.edu

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Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#71

Post by tossandthrow »

dgellow wrote: post #53
matwood wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible This is many people at many jobs. We continue to see this weird thing when AI comes into an industry that suddenly the product being produced by the people was perfect/amazing/whatever. Maybe that's true for the majority of HN who are lucky enough to work with experts in every field, but in the general population th…

The problem is that a layman has no way to know if what the llm told them is better than experts around them, or even just remotely correct. A wrong response and a correct, informative, helpful response look exactly the same, the LLM will express the same level of confidence and will defend them in both cases. So, on one hand you can get an expert take that might be wrong, but is linked to an actual person, with a re…

Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd.

It is entirely clear that is it not the case when I compare agent generated apps with what contracted software teams have produced.

For medicine it is likely worse.

Doctors do care, but they have to give an advice based on their 15 year old knowledge - they simply can't read through 83 papers in a quick session.

I think it is a matter of time before we see the first insurance companies assign greater risk to human advice (legal, tech, medicine, etc.) than to agentic advice.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#72

Post by AndrewKemendo »

delusional wrote: post #19
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…

> However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Yes they were. Educators have been talking about how access to the internet has affected their students learning since forever. We were cautioned and had dedicated classes to teach us to be critical of different sources, teaching us what Wikipedia could and could not be used for. The internet was deliberately turned off for our exams.…

Nobody uses crypto everyday

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#73

Post by adityamwagh »

rglullis wrote: post #60
j4yav wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A street wise moron used as a sort of meat puppet to carry a computer around that answers questions for him? What does that even mean practically? Won’t the graduates who learned how to think also have access, but then also be able to think for themselves too?

I think the real question here is: if you are smart and can find the resources to "learn how to think", and if a "smart guy with access to AI tools" can perform as well as any other trained lawyer, then what is the point of going to a competitive school in the first place?

You can't become "smart" just like that and "learn to think". It takes years od dedicated effort to reach that stage. Getting into a competitive school takes just that - years of dedicated effort.

> "smart guy with access to AI tools" can perform as well as any other trained lawyer

You are seriously understating the ability of a trained lawyer and overstating the ability AI tools.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#74

Post by SoftTalker »

tossandthrow wrote: post #71
dgellow wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a layman has no way to know if what the llm told them is better than experts around them, or even just remotely correct. A wrong response and a correct, informative, helpful response look exactly the same, the LLM will express the same level of confidence and will defend them in both cases. So, on one hand you can get an expert take that might be wrong, but is linked to an actual person, with a re…

Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd. It is entirely clear that is it not the case when I compare agent generated apps with what contracted software teams have produced. For medicine it is likely worse. Doctors do care, but they have to give an advice based on their 15 year old knowledge - they simply can't read through 83 papers in a quick session. I thin…

15 year old knowledge is fine in most cases. Human diseases and their treatments haven't really changed in that time, and those that have are pretty well known. You will get the "standard of care" as a starting point.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#75

Post by rglullis »

adityamwagh wrote: post #73
rglullis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real question here is: if you are smart and can find the resources to "learn how to think", and if a "smart guy with access to AI tools" can perform as well as any other trained lawyer, then what is the point of going to a competitive school in the first place?

You can't become "smart" just like that and "learn to think". It takes years od dedicated effort to reach that stage. Getting into a competitive school takes just that - years of dedicated effort. > "smart guy with access to AI tools" can perform as well as any other trained lawyer You are seriously understating the ability of a trained lawyer and overstating the ability AI tools.

No, I am not saying that a smart person will outperform a trained lawyer because of the AI tools.

What I am saying is that going to schools no longer is the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#76

Post by rayiner »

dgellow wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI companies would literally need the entire world as their TAM, using their services non stop to justify the valuations and level of expenditures we are seeing. What you describe is literally the symptoms of a bubble That’s not true. Apple alone is valued higher than the largest three AI companies combined.

I don't see how that's related. Apple has high margin on the hardware they sell, extremely optimized logistics, they offer a whole ecosystem of hardware and services. They are in a completely different line of business than AI vendors

You said: "AI companies would literally need the entire world as their TAM, using their services non stop to justify the valuations and level of expenditures we are seeing."

You asserted that AI companies would need "the entire world as their TAM using their services non stop" to justify a few trillion in valuation. Yet Apple has a $5 trillion valuation just selling phones and computers, mostly to consumers and not businesses. Google built a $2 trillion valuation by the end of 2021 mainly on search and ads. Our economy is very large and you don't need to take over "the entire world" in order to justify a few companies with $1 trillion valuations.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#77

Post by ElProlactin »

matwood wrote: post #43
ElProlactin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you know? Unless you have expertise in this area, you can't really know if you have a good contract until you have to litigate it. I ran multiple businesses for over 20 years, and during that time had to deal with countless contracts involving commercial transactions, leases, funding events and employment. I worked closely with outside counsel, and had to deal with numerous disputes and lawsuits. Many con…

I don't know why you're downvoted. People act like lawyers do something magical, but if you have been around business contracts for 2+ decades you can certainly draft one and then just have a lawyer review if you want.

In the US in particular, topics such as law, accounting and medicine are heavily gatekept to the point where many people believe that unless you're a lawyer, accountant or doctor, you shouldn't even be able to discuss these subjects in any meaningful way.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#79

Post by AndrewKemendo »

KPGv2 wrote: post #5
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…

> However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were massively impactful technologies. How has crypto been massively impactful?

I should have used a different example there for sure. Cryptocurrency was impactful but not in the same way

The point I’m making is a financial bubble can burst while also massively changing the world

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#80

Post by rayiner »

rglullis wrote: post #75
adityamwagh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't become "smart" just like that and "learn to think". It takes years od dedicated effort to reach that stage. Getting into a competitive school takes just that - years of dedicated effort. > "smart guy with access to AI tools" can perform as well as any other trained lawyer You are seriously understating the ability of a trained lawyer and overstating the ability AI tools.

No, I am not saying that a smart person will outperform a trained lawyer because of the AI tools. What I am saying is that going to schools no longer is the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer.

Going to school was never the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer. Law is like consulting and finance in that the “school” part is mostly filtering and socialization and signaling. The actual education is maybe like 1 year of the three years people spend in law school.
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