AI is enhancing the US legal system, for better and worse

Watch AI is enhancing the US legal system, for better and worse - Straight Arrow News on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent in every industry, including the legal system.

00:05And while experts say AI can benefit someone in need of legal help,

00:09lawyers are more frequently getting caught using AI to create their filings entirely.

00:17It is now more or less, you know, a weekly event that this happens to some lawyer that

00:23kind of didn't realize people would check these things or look into it.

00:27Lawyer Ryan Abbott says there's nothing intrinsically problematic about lawyers using AI.

00:33However, those lawyers need to be aware of what they signed their name on.

00:37At the end of the day, the lawyer signing their name to a pleading needs to take responsibility

00:43that what's in the pleading is accurate to the best of their knowledge.

00:47And if they've just asked a generative AI system to draft something,

00:52not validated it and submitted it, they're not doing that.

00:55There are consequences for lawyers caught using AI, especially when it leads to errors.

01:01Those consequences include sanctions, impacts on the case, and even more for repeat offenders.

01:07You can get referred to a state bar and a state bar can censure, suspend, or even, you know,

01:13for egregious enough instances.

01:15Lawyers aren't just using AI to write legal documents.

01:18They're also using it for tasks outside the courtroom.

01:21It's used, you know, very highly for things like discovery.

01:24It used to be you'd have, you know, basements full of lawyers and banker boxes going over documents,

01:30and now everything gets uploaded to e-platforms and AI goes through it.

01:35You still have a lot of human review, though.

01:37If you're in the market for a lawyer, there's no real legal obligation for them to tell you

01:42if they plan to use AI in your case.

01:44Now, one thing the industry sees as a benefit to increased AI use is more legal access for average Americans.

01:51Lawyers tend to be fairly expensive and, frankly, beyond the means of most normal people to pay for most legal needs.

01:59You know, AI systems may do something comparable at a small fraction of the price.

02:03That's leading to more Americans representing themselves and using AI to help file legal documents.

02:09It's effectively impossible to stop people from doing that.

02:12So I think courts are primed when self-represented individuals file things to be a bit more skeptical about what they're filing.

02:21Abbott said AI isn't going away in the legal system and will likely continue to permeate the industry.

02:28It has a lot of very exciting benefits as well to improving legal practice, cutting down on costs,

02:34dispute resolution timeframes, and doing all sorts of useful things.

02:37So I'm very excited to see what happens with AI and the law from here.

02:40For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan.

02:43If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com.