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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

#41

Post by tossandthrow »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #40
tossandthrow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. I think this extends to the other areas that AI is also disrupting. Software engineers are also absolutely terrible: In being sloppy with handling errors, doing coercions, etc. All because always engineering after best practice simply takes too much time and mental load. The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue. It can keep on, launch ad…

> The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue It's worse than mental fatigue. A friend had GLM 5.2 suddenly become dumb for hours. It started forgetting instructions, randomly inserted some bits in simplified chinese... Apparently throttled due to demand. there was tons of tokens left. (btw when your llm runs out of tokens is another example that's worse than fatigue) A tired programme…

> A tired programmer usually knows he's tired

6 months ago everybody talked about how AI was not able to plan their work. They could only do minor changes.

The introspective property of knowing when you are "tired" and acting appropriately will likely be trivially observed in 6 months.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#42

Post by matwood »

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…

> 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 that's simply not the case.

Many doctors, lawyers, and programmers are not very good at their jobs - I've seen it first hand. AI gives the general population a way to steer around these people a bit, and maybe ask the right questions. Is it perfect? Nope, but it's often better than the people someone has access to.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#43

Post by matwood »

ElProlactin wrote: post #17
anon373839 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what I've seen, the top AI models can now produce contracts that are on par with what I would have had to pay thousands of dollars for a decade ago 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. > you still run everything by a real attorney of course for the accountability piece Your attorney can make better use of AI…

> 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.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#44

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

tossandthrow wrote: post #41
ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue It's worse than mental fatigue. A friend had GLM 5.2 suddenly become dumb for hours. It started forgetting instructions, randomly inserted some bits in simplified chinese... Apparently throttled due to demand. there was tons of tokens left. (btw when your llm runs out of tokens is another example that's worse than fatigue) A tired programme…

> A tired programmer usually knows he's tired 6 months ago everybody talked about how AI was not able to plan their work. They could only do minor changes. The introspective property of knowing when you are "tired" and acting appropriately will likely be trivially observed in 6 months.

human fatigue is detected by sensory experience and there's no sensory experience for llms. so it can just guess.

operators will never expose this guess to the user (who wants to pay for a tool that complains and refuses work?) so they probably will use it to load balance differently. and if they are out of resources then they can't load balance so they'll just hope you won't notice, so we're back to where we started. maybe it's already roughly how it works now...

what's most likely in 6 months is a big correction in pricing, once they get people hooked up on this enough. maybe there will be a model that manages to detect when it's stupid but it won't be available outside FAANG and DOD

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#45

Post by agentprose »

slopinthebag wrote: post #12
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.

[flagged]

I'm sorry that I created a new account to not doxx myself. The number of bits of entropy of court cases in the US, in which a pro se plaintiff won, and has obviously written-by-codex legal filings, is not one I would sacrifice to identify my main account.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#46

Post by agentprose »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #23
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.)

In my case, the defendant was indeed breaking the law, but it was a "new" law untested by case law, so it was somewhat risky how a judge would interpret it. The counsel of record for the defendant was bringing "recycled briefs" energy, possibly out of overconfidence.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#47

Post by agentprose »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #15
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.

I've seen lawyers lose to non-lawyers who didn't use all that, just because the lawyers didn't do their work, thinking, no doubt, "I'm a lawyer I will just win", at any rate there is a well known aphorism that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client. finally, was this thing you beat the actual lawyer at in their specific specialty, since lawyers are often focused on particular aspects of the law?

It was a condominium law specialized attorney representing a condominium association on a matter of condominium law.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#48

Post by nradov »

cognitiveinline wrote: post #33
bonzini wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Adversarial agents and reviews means 3 is very clearly giving the benefit to AI. Let's face it, only thing lawyers are there for right now is to take liability. And even that may not be needed 5 years from now. Middlemen that can be automated will be automated.

Lawyers do a lot more than accepting liability. In my field they spend a lot of time on contract negotiation, and on interpreting what federal and state regulations actually require us to do.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#49

Post by nradov »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #29
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…

It's really the junior associates doing most of that grunt work. Paralegals in most firms have more limited responsibilities. Some work has already been handed over to LLMs but the job market for graduates of first-tier law schools remains strong.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#50

Post by nradov »

keiferski wrote: post #28

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…

Even small corporations have a huge need for paperwork in terms of contract negotiation and redlining agreements. Some of this can be partially automated but the real value an experienced attorney brings is in knowing how those issues fit into the larger business context, and deciding what to press on or concede.
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