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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

#21

Post by mag7269 »

wxw wrote: post #2

I think this plan is really quite well-balanced and sane. Also kudos to UChicago Law School for including an actual implementation plan here, not just vague thoughts. Some bits I found interesting: [For required courses in year 1] > Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom. > Additionally, examinations will be in-class without access…

All nice and all, but their grads will be wrecked by a street-wise guy with AI glasses (and eventually an implanted chip). There’s no competition in a machines vs humans match. It’s over. Of course these elite centers of knowledge want to keep the status quo, they base their entire existence on gate-keeping useful shit from the riff-raff. Well, fuck them.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#22

Post by ElProlactin »

rayiner wrote: post #16
ElProlactin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly to the changes I expect to see in any kind of white collar job where AI replaces a lot of the data analysis/data transformation work, leaving people to do more human interaction. Taking law as the example, I'm not sure I agree. Legal is largely a distress purchase. Very few clients actually want to spend time interacting with outside corporate counsel, a divorce lawyer, a personal injury lawyer, etc. The…

> The problem is that much of what makes a "good" lawyer comes from years of doing unglamorous work as a junior, financed by clients. If AI reduces the ability of firms to subsidize training the next generation of lawyers, you get fewer "good" lawyers and the whole market keeps eroding. That is what AI will do, and firms will figure out how to adapt. To be fair, this trend has been going on for some time now already.…

> But—lawyers are a transaction cost and it’s good for the economy to automate as much of it as we can!

I guess it depends on how you look at it.

I don't think anyone would argue that spending money on lawyers is an ideal use of capital. But if AI-driven automation reduces overall demand for legal services (as measured by billable hours) and/or erodes the pricing power of lawyers/law firms, it doesn't mean that the "savings" will benefit all participants in the economy.

The biggest beneficiary will be corporations, as reduced legal expenditure can boost corporate profits. But that is a boon for the wealthy shareholder class, not the worker class. "Lawyer" has been one of the highest-paying white collar jobs available so the question becomes: as all of these high-paying white collar jobs become less plentiful, how do young people not born into wealth develop opportunities to get ahead economically?

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#23

Post by applfanboysbgon »

agentprose wrote: post #11

I recent beat an actual lawyer as a pro se plaintiff in a civil suit. It was all codex and claude, using the cli agents to write the "import docx" scripts that wrote all the filings, and scripts to assemble exhibits. I don't know how long the bars will be able to hold onto their monopoly powers when confronted with LLMs that are measurably superior.

Is it perhaps possible that you won your case because you didn't break the law, or conversely because the other party did break the law? Unless ChatGPT persuaded a judge to side in your favor even though you were legally in the wrong, this really doesn't tell us anything at all. (And even in that circumstance, it might speak more to the complete incompetence of the other party's legal representation.)

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#24

Post by j4yav »

mag7269 wrote: post #21
wxw wrote: post #2

I think this plan is really quite well-balanced and sane. Also kudos to UChicago Law School for including an actual implementation plan here, not just vague thoughts. Some bits I found interesting: [For required courses in year 1] > Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom. > Additionally, examinations will be in-class without access…

All nice and all, but their grads will be wrecked by a street-wise guy with AI glasses (and eventually an implanted chip). There’s no competition in a machines vs humans match. It’s over. Of course these elite centers of knowledge want to keep the status quo, they base their entire existence on gate-keeping useful shit from the riff-raff. Well, fuck them.

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?

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#25

Post by kozzion »

As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week and most of them have 10-20 serious drafting errors on them. The most common ones are of the order of defining the same concept like 'a working day' in various conflicting ways without every specifying when which of the conflicting definitions should be used. Lawyers still have something to add to process but for every time they catch AI out on them, the machine is usually already 10-1 ahead.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#26

Post by shevy-java »

> our graduates will be expected to be prepared to use them in legal practice.

But then why do I need a lawyer?

I do watch Travis's videos. Ever since he integrated AI, the video quality dropped immensely and it became really stupid, compared to his older videos. AI degraded the quality and discussions he used to have with law enforcement too, it's quite sad actually.

https://www.youtube.com/@Exchange_IDs/videos

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#27

Post by w10-1 »

wxw wrote: post #2

I think this plan is really quite well-balanced and sane. Also kudos to UChicago Law School for including an actual implementation plan here, not just vague thoughts. Some bits I found interesting: [For required courses in year 1] > Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom. > Additionally, examinations will be in-class without access…

These are the right bits to call out.

But the effect is to make success more dependent on networks. (If they are using AI as an excuse to make networks more relevant than skills, it relieves competitive pressure.)

First, a main draw of law journals is the filing cabinet of past exams as remembered by past students, available only to journal members i.e., friends of connected people. Reducing one's ability to remember what was in a lecture only increases the advantage insiders have.

Second, the "Socratic" Method for teaching law is nothing like it is in philosophy; it's more of a weird combination of hide-the-ball and distraction that again ensures people who can see through the clouds are using out-of-band information, and share it only with those they seek to enlist or join.

> all students will be required to engage in an oral discussion of their SRP with their supervising professor, in an in-person setting

I'm surprised anyone could get through otherwise. When did it become legitimate to dump your paper and not answer for it?

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#28

Post by keiferski »

It’s interesting to think that the “public speaking skills” aspect of some legal jobs will probably continue to be AI-proof for the indefinite future. No one is going to present ChatGPT on an iPad as their defense attorney.

On the other hand, the paperwork-first side of law is probably in for a tough future. Especially if your clients are not big corporations or rich celebrities.

In general I think my advice to young people is: focus on social skills, public speaking, etc. These are not going to be replaced by robots in your lifetime.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#29

Post by ButlerianJihad »

kozzion wrote: post #25

As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week and most of them have 10-20 serious drafting errors on them. The most common ones are of the order of defining the same concept like 'a working day' in various conflicting ways without every specifying when which of the conflicting definitions should be used. Lawyers still h…

I have the impression that most law firms consume and produce documentation by means of a cadre of paralegals who are minimally trained, minimally experienced, and maximally stressed by the pressure of deadlines and case loads. These paralegals are probably working to read hundreds of pages of legal filings and make sense out of them, and on the other end, they are working to produce as much documentation as possible and that's going to be by cut-and-paste assembly. So no, they are not going to understand stuff very well, and no, their output is not really going to be consistent or intelligible. But the managing attorneys depend on these paralegals to get anything done, just like Congresspeople rely on their staffers to actually read bills and draft legislation.

At the end of the day, I think these paralegals have been quite weak links, and nearly nobody will notice a difference in quality when it's all handed over to LLMs. But the paralegals will lose their jobs, and probably have nothing better to do than purchase angle grinders and cut down Flock camera poles, or crown the front hood of Waymos with a traffic pylon.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#30

Post by bonzini »

kozzion wrote: post #25

As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week and most of them have 10-20 serious drafting errors on them. The most common ones are of the order of defining the same concept like 'a working day' in various conflicting ways without every specifying when which of the conflicting definitions should be used. Lawyers still h…

But the real question is 1) whether other human lawyers would catch the error 2) in how much time 3) which of the errors introduced by AI vs. human would have bigger consequences. On 1 and 2 the answers are very likely to be "yes" and "it would take humans more time", but the question that really matters is 3.
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