
I am something of a persona non grata on the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (because I’m on to them, and they know it) listserv, but the list still has its uses. For example, one of the more ethical ethics lawyers circulated a question he received from a student in his legal ethics class regarding the use of artificial intelligence in class:
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I think a lot of the proposed uses should not be prohibited simply because of AI use. They should be discouraged because they impede the development of useful skills.
the one he said he found very useful, cutting down words to make a page limit, is something he should learn. I worked for a lawyer while I was in law school; he was terribly verbose. I had to edit his briefs to get them under the limit. I went through every line, every word, cutting down pages, only for him to expand them again. It was an aggravatingly useful exercise.
Using AI to correct grammar? Same comment: you should learn it. However, Microsoft Word already does a spell-check and some grammar checks. Is that “AI”? Should that be prohibited if AI is?
Prohibited translation? Yeah, it’s great to learn a foreign language but that is kinda a big expectation. I honestly don’t understand this one. How would this problem present itself. Most foreign language uses in the law would seem to be Latin. However, those are typically short and easily found in black’s law dictionary. However, if I Google the phrase to get the translation, how is that different than using AI, particularly since Google searches often generate AI responses. Is using Google Translate prohibited or not. Like I said, I don’t understand the problem so I don’t understand the prohibition.
I would not be as broad in my prohibition as you, but excluding AI for pedagogical reasons strikes me as legitimate. At the same time, as someone who has said lawyers need to understand technology, including developments in AI, such a blanket prohibition thwarts that understanding. This students seems to have a good handle on its uses.
-Jut
I will precede this comment by noting that I am not a lawyer.
My first comment is that law students need to build skills such as logical thinking, doing legal research, and communicative skills that are critical to the profession as writing legal documents, and making persuasive arguments.
My second comment is that any professional needs to keep up with technology that will affect their work, and may make legal work easier and improve the quality of that work. This makes me wonder about the following prohibitions *Asking an AI tool to identify repetitive passages in a paper that should be cut (prohibited revising) *Asking an AI tool to polish a paper by correcting grammatical mistakes (prohibited editing). To me this makes as much sense as prohibiting lawyers to use Microsoft Word’s spell check functionality (which is does not always give perfect corrections). Is it still OK for lawyers to use Microsoft 365? Microsoft 365 integrates AI technology in all its applications, such as Word, EXCEL, and, PowerPoint. Unless we want to go back to an era when lawyers wore wigs and breaches, and wrote with feather and ink from a pot, the legal profession should better get on board with new technology and learn how to use it properly and how to avoid pitfalls such as including quoting bogus legal cases due to AI hallucinations.
AI technology is new, new technology has child diseases, and that means that critical documents or research results still needs a pair of human eyes before publication. Just dismissing an entire technology out of fear renders a professional a Luddite.
I would think that the legal profession should welcome the development of research tools using AI that do not hallucinate, but use real legal data bases. Streamlining research time could increase productivity and save clients a lot of hourly fees. And if legal AI can become sophisticated enough to draft documents that do not hallucinate, would this not be a boon to the profession? Or is this on that spectrum of humans forgetting how to think?
Students, on the other hand, do need to learn skills by doing the work. There is something to be said for reading, taking notes outlining and summarizing. Apparently doing those things yourself cements the information in your brain far better than letting a bot do the work for you.
Having said that, I do not know that using AI to study should be denied. It should not be used for student work product.
Also not a lawyer.