How the lawyers are reacting to AI
It all seems to come down to where you sit in the ecosystem
Today I’ll be sharing some of the legal community’s reactions to all the AI hype, based on on and off the record conversations. In short, I’ve found that it really comes down to where you sit in the ecosystem—law firm lawyers, in house lawyers, and professors / students have all reacted differently. I’ll close today’s article with where I think all this AI is headed, and what impact I think it’ll have on legal work in the future. But first:
Last week someone posted a thread on Twitter about how to use that free chatbot to replace your lawyer. The post received over 32 million views, leading to a bunch of different reactions from the legal community. As a self described hype man, I tried to ride the wave with my own parody thread. But after the dust had settled it made me think on why the lawyers reacted the way they did, and how it depends on where they sit in the ecosystem.
Over the past few months I’ve noticed that law firm lawyers seem most concerned about when the AI makes things up, ie. hallucinations. Many tech bros seem to dismiss the hallucination concern, and accuse the law firm lawyers of objecting out of self interest. Personally, I think that criticism misses the mark. Even though I do think that economic incentives play a role in why law firms hesitate to adopt technology.