More businesses are attempting to use AI to perform a variety of tasks that legal counsel would typically perform, including: draft contracts, review and summarize documents, conduct legal research. The reality is that while AI can do great things, there are tremendous risks and pitfalls in using AI to perform such legal services, the results of which can be catastrophic, and very often increase legal fee expenditures.
Why is your “AI lawyer” potentially (likely) wrong? A few simple reasons:
- Garbage in, garbage out. The information that AI provides is highly dependent on the accuracy of the query. If the end user does not fully understand what they are looking for or trying to accomplish, or they phrase what they want incorrectly, then the likelihood that a wrong answer is provided increases exponentially.
- You don’t know what you don’t know, and neither does AI. While many legal services may seem “easy” or “routine”, the reality is that providing even simple legal answers requires experience and knowledge that non-lawyers rarely have. More to the point, neither you, nor AI, know if the answer that is provided by AI (whether an answer to a legal question or the drafting of a document) is correct unless an experienced attorney has reviewed the results.
- AI does not, actually, know anything. It is important to understand that AI does not “think” or “solve problems.” Rather, it is a highly efficient information gathering and parsing technology that uses probability to determine whether information it finds is the most likely information to be the correct answer to the question posed. Said another way, it searches the internet, and the information that shows up the most can often be delivered as the “right” answer when, in fact, it is not.
- AI can hallucinate. AI has been known to make things up in an effort to make the user happy. There have been numerous examples, some with very serious consequences. Search “AI hallucinations in legal cases” and you will find myriad examples of people, including lawyers, getting caught by AI.
- Breach of Confidentiality: There is no attorney-client privilege when providing information to AI. Most AI users also do not fully understand the confidentiality or lack thereof of information they input. A recent analysis found that by using AI to search for other AI inquiries only, you could actually learn much about the people using AI just from the information the users sought which was not protected. In addition, providing certain information to an AI platform may breach contractual or other legal obligations of confidentiality, or you may expose sensitive information to the public. On the other hand, by leaving out sensitive or confidential information, you may not provide AI with sufficient or complete information to obtain the most thorough and thought out answer resulting in the potential failure of the very purpose for which AI was used in the first place.
- Unknown Biases: Each AI system was developed differently with different inherent biases and limits of which the user may often not be aware. This is why different AI systems often come to different conclusions or provide different output even where the input is the same. A non-attorney using AI to provide legal services is unlikely to have any idea of whether the AI output is accurate, effective or proper under the circumstances.
- Lack of Accountability: Attorneys are accountable to their clients and to well-known ethical codes of conduct. Attorneys are required to carry malpractice insurance. Attorneys are educated in the law and continue their training throughout their career and unlike with AI, clients often choose their attorney based on this experience. AI, on the other hand, has zero accountability and zero training on the law. If AI makes a mistake, the user is out of luck, and more significantly, the user may never even know about it until it is too late.
Bottom line – you can use AI as a head start on solving a legal problem or to create a legal document, but the final outcome should be reviewed by qualified legal counsel. This is not a pitch for legal services – it is a warning that relying solely on AI for services provided by qualified legal counsel will very likely result in a bad outcome.
For more information on the use of AI in your business operations and related legal issues, please contact Michael Feldman, Esq., at or Kurt Olender, Esq., at .
