3 ms·

I will reserve judgment of the possibilities of LLMs as applied to the legal field until they are tested on something other than Document/ contract review. Cont

I will reserve judgment of the possibilities of LLMs as applied to the legal field until they are tested on something other than Document/ contract review. Contract review is, in the large business law case, often done by outsourcing to hundreds of recent graduates and act more like proof reading with minimal application of actual lawyering skills to increase a corporation’s bottom line. The more common, for individual purchasers of legal services, lawyering is going to be family law matters, criminal law matters, and small claims court matters. I can not see a time in the near future where an LLM can handle the fact specific and circumstantial analysis required to handle felony criminal litigation, and I see nothing that would imply LLMs can even approach the individualized, case specific and convoluted family dynamics required for custody cases or contested divorces. I’m not unwilling to accept LLMs as a tool an attorney can use, but outside of more rote legal proof reading I don’t think the technology is at all ready for adoption in actual practice.

giantg2 3y ago
"and I see nothing that would imply LLMs can even approach the individualized, case specific and convoluted family dynamics required for custody cases or contested divorces." Humans are pretty bad at this. Based on the results, it seems the judges' personal views and emotions are a large part of these cases. I'm not sure what they would look like without emotion, personal views, and the case law built off of those.
- SkyBelow 3y ago
  The worse judges are at being perfectly removed arbiters of justice, the more room for lawyers to exploit things like emotions and humans connections with those judges, and thus the worse LLMs will be at doing that part of the job. A charismatic lawyer backed by an LLM will be much better than an LLM. At least until the LLMs surpass humans at being charismatic, but that would seem to be its own nightmare scenario.
  - staunton 3y ago
    > At least until the LLMs surpass humans at being charismatic Look into "virtual influencers". Sounds like you should find it interesting.
- staunton 3y ago
  > judges' personal views and emotions are a large part of these cases That's a completely separate question. We're talking about automating lawyers, not judges. (to be a good lawyer in such a situation, you would need to model the judge's emotions and use them to your advantage. Probably AIs can do this eventually but it's not easy or likely to happen soon)
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Well, judges are a subset of lawyers. And interactions with judges are a large part of being a successful lawyer, as you point out.

giantg2 3y ago

"and I see nothing that would imply LLMs can even approach the individualized, case specific and convoluted family dynamics required for custody cases or contested divorces." Humans are pretty bad at this. Based on the results, it seems the judges' personal views and emotions are a large part of these cases. I'm not sure what they would look like without emotion, personal views, and the case law built off of those.

SkyBelow 3y ago
The worse judges are at being perfectly removed arbiters of justice, the more room for lawyers to exploit things like emotions and humans connections with those judges, and thus the worse LLMs will be at doing that part of the job. A charismatic lawyer backed by an LLM will be much better than an LLM. At least until the LLMs surpass humans at being charismatic, but that would seem to be its own nightmare scenario.
- staunton 3y ago
  > At least until the LLMs surpass humans at being charismatic Look into "virtual influencers". Sounds like you should find it interesting.
staunton 3y ago
> judges' personal views and emotions are a large part of these cases That's a completely separate question. We're talking about automating lawyers, not judges. (to be a good lawyer in such a situation, you would need to model the judge's emotions and use them to your advantage. Probably AIs can do this eventually but it's not easy or likely to happen soon)
- giantg2 3y ago
  Well, judges are a subset of lawyers. And interactions with judges are a large part of being a successful lawyer, as you point out.