Many judges are overreacting to recent stories about lawyers misusing ChatGPT, and this is bad news, because we need courts to decide AI-legal issues based on reason and the law, not on fear
Nice piece Adam. Two quick thoughts. (1) Judges can’t disbar lawyers — without looking it up, I’m pretty sure the Levidow lawyers are facing their bar‘s disciplinary processes. (2) if I were practicing in front of judges who require an AI disclaimer, I’d write a generic one that “floods the zone” with every software tool in my toolbox: Word, gmail, CaseText, etc. who’s to say what is and isn’t AI these days? I’m not usually the malicious compliance type, but in this situation it would be the proper CYA and also illustrate the ridiculousness of the order.
RE: disbarment -- thanks John you are 100% right. I edited the post to clarify this (clarify is a nice way of saying "correct my mistake" :) and then I actually wound up updating the whole section, since I think my original version incorrectly downplayed the penalties that the lawyers are facing.
Agree that "strict compliance" may be the best (in fact may be the only) reasonable approach here. But having said that, I think it's going to be a brave lawyer who is the first to do that with a judge who holds their client's fate in their hands. My **guess** is that this is going to wind up creating a chilling effect for innovation and most lawyers are just going to avoid anything that smacks of "AI". You and I know that AI is arguably in lots of legal software, but I suspect many lawyers don't, and that these lawyers will decide "As long as I avoid ChatGPT, I'm safe" More's the pity.
Nice piece Adam. Two quick thoughts. (1) Judges can’t disbar lawyers — without looking it up, I’m pretty sure the Levidow lawyers are facing their bar‘s disciplinary processes. (2) if I were practicing in front of judges who require an AI disclaimer, I’d write a generic one that “floods the zone” with every software tool in my toolbox: Word, gmail, CaseText, etc. who’s to say what is and isn’t AI these days? I’m not usually the malicious compliance type, but in this situation it would be the proper CYA and also illustrate the ridiculousness of the order.
RE: disbarment -- thanks John you are 100% right. I edited the post to clarify this (clarify is a nice way of saying "correct my mistake" :) and then I actually wound up updating the whole section, since I think my original version incorrectly downplayed the penalties that the lawyers are facing.
Agree that "strict compliance" may be the best (in fact may be the only) reasonable approach here. But having said that, I think it's going to be a brave lawyer who is the first to do that with a judge who holds their client's fate in their hands. My **guess** is that this is going to wind up creating a chilling effect for innovation and most lawyers are just going to avoid anything that smacks of "AI". You and I know that AI is arguably in lots of legal software, but I suspect many lawyers don't, and that these lawyers will decide "As long as I avoid ChatGPT, I'm safe" More's the pity.