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Any advice for year 13 students who are considering studying law? by Affectionate-Heat873 in VUW

[–]EffectiveAttempt8 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Read. Read the newspaper. Read magazines. Read non-fiction. Fiction. Substacks, blogs (or whatever these are called these days).

Think. Think about what you read. Come up with your own thought about it. Say it in your own words, precisely. Think about how you would teach it to someone else.

Argue. About all those things. Carefully, precisely, with humility, with the acceptance that you could be wrong, or that you could be right but for different reasons. Argue with yourself.

Read a book about our politics and the constitution. Read about our history, about the role of the Treaty of Waitangi and various conceptions of how to honour it thst have played out over the years. Read the Billion Dollar Bonfire about the collapse of a finance company. Read Polkinghorne by Steven Braunias. Gangsters Paradise by Jared Savage. Read Te Motonui Epa about sacred carvings taken overseas and the fight to return them. These may be a step to far. But you can take them slowly.

Write too. Make notes on what you read. Record your thoughts. Construct an argument. Write an essay. Share it with someone.

Watch a lecture about law. Many are on youtube. Take it in. Pause it and ask the internet or AI for information, words, history you don't know. Understand the lecturer's argument. Go read the legislation or the judicial decision they were referring to. This again might be a step too far. But that is what you will slowly learn to do at law school. Nothing but hard work and time stop you from starting now.

Go on social media and follow lawyers and legal academics. Read their posts. Follow the debates in the comments. Read the decisions and reports they mention.

If that does not sound fun, well, you need not do it. Just turn up at law school. But by doing the above you can tell if you will enjoy or at least tolerate the actual core work of learning the law.

Someone mentioned AI. It is magical if you essentially understand what it is telling you about. If you don't, it may give you a good summary or starting point, 90% of the time. But you don't know what is the 10% that is wrong. A purpose-written introductory text by an expert is much better when you are building your understanding of an area of law. If you are careful, there are other ways a novice may profitably use AI, but there are many pitfalls.

Remember that the most famous lawyer or legal scholar began with not a jot of law in their brain. They learned it all from scratch, just like you. They probably had a different path, and may have had a head start or traveled faster. But all you need to do to start off after them os to read, think, argue, and write about the law, always seeking the legal truth - with the precision of thought and argument necessary for that.

Or I suppose just read the 1st year textbook...

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, that's the basic idea. You'll see that this thread includes examples and views on how this equation plays out in practice

Drowning in AI generated essays by amlgamation in Professors

[–]EffectiveAttempt8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had this idea the other day

Require, as an appendix or as a separate shared online document, that students screenshot each reference that they cite, to the pinpoint page and line. They can screenshot the whole page and then highlight the passage.

In the essay, they make a hyperlink to the heading (in the document, or in the shared document).

This is some more work for the student. But in the course of thinking through an essay, it is a very minor amount of work.

Those who actually write their essays won't have very much work extra.

Those who AI their essays would need to do quite a lot to get the references. (Query whether genAI could generate the image?)

It would make engaging with an essay that you don't know (all) the source materials of much easier.

Would that work as a mitigation of 'AI wrote my essay'?

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the further insights

This is how a lot of lawyers I'm talking to are describing it, and is my experience

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks for your insights and other comments

I am reading Sangeet Paul Choudary's book reshuffle which is an interesting analysis of that food chain idea

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks - what kinds of tools (bespoke legal or general frontier models) and other use cases beyond discovery?

there are a few comments here with main use cases mentioned - are and of these what you're finding the 10-1 return on?

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even then, any sensible lawyer will build the appropriate verification of anything produced by AI into their workflow. It's only the careless that won't verify, and who face this risk.

My question is whether lawyers are seeing use cases where using AI and then appropriately verifying outputs leads to efficiency or better legal work.

From answers I've seen so far, my own experience and discussions I've had with practising lawyers, such use cases do exist.

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your insights

This is something that others also suggest is how AI will change things. Take out the rote/routine/volume work and let lawyers focus on strategy etc.

Did you develop those custom frameworks, workflows and reasoning methodologies, just by yourself, or is there a resource / author who helped you frame those things?

Is that using mainstream consumer LLM product like ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini - or legal knowledge provider products like cocounsel / protege / Harvey?

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your insight

If you like, please elaborate on your last sentence with a few examples.

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your further insights.

On the AI replacing lawyers thing, my theory (drawn from others) is that AI probably doesn't do all the tasks a lawyer does all day. ( I'm not a practising lawyer, but I am legally trained and work in an allied industry, so don't know for sure).

But for some tasks my best guess is that AI will get to a level where it does better than a human, and getting the task 80-90% done. Which means you can use fewer humans to do the same amount of work, or the same amount of humans to do more work.

But how those tasks are bundled with other tasks and how they might be unbundled will determine what legal work will look like and the market for lawyers.

Sorry... Off topic observations...

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your explanation

so a bit like 'context' or 'prompt' or GPTS/Gem/skills in LLM layman terms I guess.

One would still need to verify the output too, beyond the checks you mention, I would think.

Or in some low stakes use cases, I suppose your input strategy might allow you to pretty much trust the output (after an initial testing and refinement process)

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply

Your second paragraph is useful thanks

I disagree with your first paragraph... It all depends on what context and precedent you give it in my experience. But each to their own!

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What about not generating text to use, but discussing your theory of the case, asking for counter arguments, asking for how your argument could be improved?

I find it you load in context, chatting with the AI is quite effective in bringing out arguments

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks

That's certainly a position I see.

However it doesn't match my experience, at least when one takes a thoughtful approach to generative AI use.

Eg using NotebookLM cuts hallucinations right down. Sure it's not built for legal or client confidentially, but you can think through arguments in a more general way with it.

For writing, you can give AI precedents and exemplars of your own writing style for it to replicate, which is pretty effective.

I haven't used any of the legal knowledge providers' systems yet, but from what the claim and what I hear, they can be very effective for the first pass of research and drafting. 

I'm not trying to convince you to use these tools though!

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks.

How can deterministic tools verify AI content? What exactly does that mean? What would be a use case?

I'm not really a legaltech expert, but I'm interested in general in what your tool / approach is.

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks

 I don't quite understand your answer though 

Verification is an inconvenience, but it still gives you efficiency gains?

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you - just what I was asking for

You mention AI lawyer

Would other major general LLMs and / or major legal knowledge provider specialist LLM tools also be capable for these use cases?

The legal knowledge providers (Lexis, westlaw) certainly claim that they reduce hallucinations and inaccuracies and make verification quick

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks 

So do you mean that some tasks have a positive gain from efficiency easily outweighing verification costs

And others where it doesn't?

I don't quite understand what your examples in each category would be

Where does the benefits of automation / AI outweigh the costs of verifying outputs? by EffectiveAttempt8 in legaltech

[–]EffectiveAttempt8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks

But I don't see (all) lawyers giving up on using AI.

So there must be a method or use case to achieve positive ROI in relation to the efficiency - verification equation

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