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Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

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Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#91

Post by cess11 »

_akhe wrote: post #73
stult wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Preload a city's, county's etc. entire set of laws You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law, at least in the US and other common law jurisdictions. Synthesizing case law into rules of law applicable to a specific case requires complex analysis that is frequently sensitive to details of the factual context, where LLMs' lack of common sense can lead it to make false conclusions, particu…

> You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law Very easily done. Is that it? > lack of common sense, false conclusions The AI tool doesn't replace the judge/DA/etc. it's just a very useful tool for them to use. Checkout the "RAG-based learning" section of this app I built ( https://github.com/bennyschmidt/ragdoll-studio ) there's a video that shows how you can effectively load new knowledge…

I'm not so sure human judgement is as comparable to medical terminology or technical manuals as you think it is.

How did you come to this conclusion?

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#92

Post by epcoa »

guidzgjx wrote: post #74
epcoa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, no idea why your doc was using Wikipedia so much, but in general the fair baseline to compare isn't Wikipedia, it's mature, professionally reviewed material like Uptodate, Dynamed, AMBOSS, etc that do have clinical decision support tools and purpose built calculators and references. Of course they're all working on GenAI stuff. (Not to mention professional wikis like LIFTL, emcrit, IBCC). An issue with the…

“wealthy institutions easily have access, poorer ones do not),” Everything you said is agreeable except that statement. The institution’s wealth doesn’t trickle down to the docs, who pay out of pocket for many of these tools.

Not sure how this is disagreeable it’s just relaying an easily verifiable fact. In the US any decent academic affiliated institution or well funded private one will have institutional memberships to one or more of these products. I’ve never paid out of pocket for either UpToDate or Dynamed, for instance, but obviously not everyone has that benefit, especially on a global level.

> The institution’s wealth doesn’t trickle down to the docs

As a general statement that’s just nonsense. Richer institutions provide better equipment for one, and will often pay for personal equipment memberships like POCUS (and that tends to be more segmented to the top institutions), training, and of course expenses for conferences.

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#93

Post by _akhe »

akira2501 wrote: post #86
_akhe wrote: post #25

I saw a RAG demo from a startup that allows you to upload patient's medical docs, then the doctor can ask it questions like: > what's the patient's bp? even questions about drugs, histories, interactions, etc. The AI keeps in mind the patient's age and condition in its responses, when recommending things, etc. It reminded me of a time I was at the ER for a rib injury and could see my doctor Wikipedia'ing stuff - coul…

> It reminded me of a time I was at the ER for a rib injury and could see my doctor Wikipedia'ing stuff When was this and what country was it in? > The doctor, the lawyer - like the software engineer - will simply be more powerful than ever I love that LLMs exist and this is what people see this as the "low hanging fruit." You'd expect that if these models had any real value, they would be used in any other walk of l…

> When was this and what country was it in?

San Francisco in 2019.

> if LLMs had value they would be used elsewhere first therefore they are not currently useful

I don't see how this logically follows. LLMs are already used and will continue to displace tooling (and even jobs) in various positions whether its cashiers, medical staff, legal staff, auto shops, police (field work and dispatch), etc. The fact they don't immediately displace knowledge workers is:

1) A win for knowledge workers, you just got a free and open source tool that makes you more valuable

2) Not indicative of lacking value, looks more like LLMs finding product-market-fit

> the concept of a hospital is now meaningless

Like saying you won't go to an auto shop that does research, or hire a developer who uses a coding assistant. Why? They'd just be better, more informed.

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#95

Post by freejazz »

_akhe wrote: post #73
stult wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Preload a city's, county's etc. entire set of laws You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law, at least in the US and other common law jurisdictions. Synthesizing case law into rules of law applicable to a specific case requires complex analysis that is frequently sensitive to details of the factual context, where LLMs' lack of common sense can lead it to make false conclusions, particu…

> You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law Very easily done. Is that it? > lack of common sense, false conclusions The AI tool doesn't replace the judge/DA/etc. it's just a very useful tool for them to use. Checkout the "RAG-based learning" section of this app I built ( https://github.com/bennyschmidt/ragdoll-studio ) there's a video that shows how you can effectively load new knowledge…

>You can load an entire product catalog into LlamaIndex and the LLM will have perfect knowledge of pricing, inventory, etc. This specific domain knowledge of inventory allows you to have the accurate, transactional conversations that a regular LLM isn't designed for.

Aren't we talking about caselaw? You didn't really respond to the point, which distinguished caselaw from information like a product catalog. And rather rudely at that.

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#96

Post by freejazz »

sumeruchat wrote: post #34
vouaobrasil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I look forward to an easy refutation then.

Well yes. This makes life better because 1) This tech makes it easy for anyone to file a complex legal complaint to a situation and then send it to the right legal department for almost free. 2) You can now ask a complex legal question and get a response for almost free. (Example is reckless driving a crime here ? What is the fine? LLM looks up your coordinates, the laws there and then gives you the exact response) 3…

>1) This tech makes it easy for anyone to file a complex legal complaint to a situation and then send it to the right legal department for almost free.

That's the assumption.

>2) You can now ask a complex legal question and get a response for almost free. (Example is reckless driving a crime here ? What is the fine? LLM looks up your coordinates, the laws there and then gives you the exact response)

I don't think that's a 'complex legal question'

>3) Even if you dont know the language this tech translates the laws for you and gives you an expert analysis for almost free.

That's not what expert means.

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#97

Post by freejazz »

a13n wrote: post #33
MontagFTB wrote: post #4

A tool like this should live in service to the legal profession. Like Copilot, without a human verifying, improving, and maintaining the work, it is risky (possibly negligent) to provide this service to end users.

At some point computers will be able to provide better, cheaper, and faster legal advice than humans. No human can fit all of the law in their head, and don't always offer the 100% accurate advice. Not everyone can afford a lawyer.

> No human can fit all of the law in their head,

Good thing there is no need to!

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#98

Post by sandworm101 »

parpfish wrote: post #85
sandworm101 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> safety net for lawyering There are some nets, but they aren't as official. The lawyer version of a Doctor's prescription pad is the ability to send threatening letters on law firm letterhead. Lawyers are also afforded privilege's in jails and prisons, things like non-monitored phone calls, that aren't made available to non-lawyers.

but there's no safety net for things that are outside the justice system (e.g., "is this a fair contract?") or things the aren't in the justice system yet (e.g., "am i allowed to cut down my neighbor's tree if it blocks my view?")

As there are no safety nets for people who want to perform their own surgery on themselves or take de-worming meds instead of getting a vaccination.

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#99

Post by spdustin »

I've always felt that a "smart" person isn't smart because they know everything, but because they know how to find the answers. Smart users of LLMs will use the output as an opportunity to learn how to think about their problem, and smart implementations of LLMs will guide the user to do so.

I'm not saying that every interaction must be Socratic, but that the LLM neither be nor present itself as the answer.

Re: Answering Legal Questions with LLMs

#100

Post by _akhe »

freejazz wrote: post #95
_akhe wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law Very easily done. Is that it? > lack of common sense, false conclusions The AI tool doesn't replace the judge/DA/etc. it's just a very useful tool for them to use. Checkout the "RAG-based learning" section of this app I built ( https://github.com/bennyschmidt/ragdoll-studio ) there's a video that shows how you can effectively load new knowledge…

>You can load an entire product catalog into LlamaIndex and the LLM will have perfect knowledge of pricing, inventory, etc. This specific domain knowledge of inventory allows you to have the accurate, transactional conversations that a regular LLM isn't designed for. Aren't we talking about caselaw? You didn't really respond to the point, which distinguished caselaw from information like a product catalog. And rather…

Rudely? Ha - they misrepresented my point about RAG tooling not replacing lawyers into a straw man about replacing lawyers - I never said that, said the opposite.

Secondly, it's obvious they have not used RAG, or they wouldn't say things like "inaccurate responses" etc. RAG is as accurate as any database (because it is a database). It puts all the information from your uploaded files into a database and reads from that. The commenter fundamentally misunderstands the technology and likely hasn't even used it - yet feels the need to comment on it like an expert. It's not like using ChatGPT, and in any case it's not in lieu of a lawyer anyway, that was just a straw man argument that goes counter to my actual post.

I did respond to the points about accuracy and legal precedents. Unlike the other false statements that were made, these are legitimate concerns a lot of people share about whether or not LLM tooling should be used by legal professionals.

Is ChatGPT sufficient to replace a lawyer? No.

Is ChatGPT sufficient as a legal advice tool that a lawyer might use on a case-by-case basis or generally? No.

Could the same LLM technology be used except on a body of specific case documents to surface information through a convenient language interface to a legal expert? Yes. It's as safe as SQL.

The point about pricing and inventory is that, unlike an LLM, RAG involves retrieval of specific facts from a document (or collection of documents) - the language is more for handling your query and matching it to that information. None of the points he made about inaccuracies and insufficient answers, etc. or replacing lawyers apply.

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