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The upside of this is that it could prevent self-represented defendants from trying to apply legal arguments or concepts in the wrong context. Pro se defendants
by hooande 4y ago
The upside of this is that it could prevent self-represented defendants from trying to apply legal arguments or concepts in the wrong context. Pro se defendants do this all the time and it really pisses off judges. ChatGPT has a reputation for being "confidently wrong", but in my experience it's less likely to make that specific category of error.
The downside is that I hire a traffic ticket attorney because they've been handling a cases similar to mine, in the same court circuit, almost every day for years. Legal work isn't about knowing the law. It's about knowing how the system works in a particular place and time. ChatGPT was trained on many thousands of various legal cases. But it can't ever really understand how a given court works unless many people have written about that place and posted it to the internet.
I feel like it would be much better for people to just type their case into the ChatGPT prompt and ask "What argument should I use?", and then take that into the courtroom. Ask it what counter arguments to expect, what the standards of evidence are, etc. You can even prompt it with "Pretend you're a traffic court judge. How would you respond to this argument?" Essentially use it as a research tool for people who are brave or foolish enough to represent themselves. Not sure how much benefit there is in having that in the room with you.