4 ms·

>Whether LLM's help you at your work is extremely domain-dependent. I really doubt that, actually. The only thing that LLMs are truly good for is to create pla

>Whether LLM's help you at your work is extremely domain-dependent. I really doubt that, actually. The only thing that LLMs are truly good for is to create plausible-sounding text. Everything else, like generating facts, is outside of its main use case and known to frequently fail.

rusticpenn 2y ago
I use llms to do most of my dunki work.
tiahura 2y ago
LLMs have become indispensable for many attorneys. I know many other professionals that have been able to offload dozens of hours of work per month to ChatGPT and Claude.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  What on earth is this work that they're doing that's so resilient to the fallible nature of LLMs? Is it just document search with a RAG?
  - tiahura 2y ago
    Everything. Drafting correspondence, pleadings discovery, discovery responses. Reviewing all of the same. Reviewing depositions, drafting deposition outlines. Everything that is “word processing,” and that’s a lot.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      Well that's terrifying. Good luck to them.
      - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
        To be honest, much of contract law is formal boilerplate. I can understand why they'd want to move their role to 'review' instead of 'generate'
        drdaeman 2y ago
        So, instead of fixing the issue (legal documents becoming a barely manageable mess) they’re investing money into making it… even worse? This world is so messed up.
        randallsquared 2y ago
        They have no lever with which to fix the issue.
        Terr_ 2y ago
        Arguably the same problem is occurs in programming: Anything so formulaic and common that an LLM can regurgitate it with a decent level of reliability... is something that ought to have been folded into method/library already. Or it already exists in some howto documentation, but nobody wanted to skim the documentation.
        PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        Why not just move over to forms with structured input?
- bad_haircut72 2y ago
  Yeah the industries LLMs will disrupt the most are the ones who gatekeep busywork. SWE falls into this to some degree but other professions are more guilty than us. They dont replace intelligence they just surface jobs which never really required much intelligence to begin with.
- sebastiennight 2y ago
  As a customer of legal work for 20 years, it is also way (way way) faster and cheaper to draft a contract with Claude (total work ~1 hour, even with complex back-and-forth ; you don't want to try to one-shot it in a single prompt) and then pay a law firm their top dollar-per-hour consulting to review/amend the contract (you can get to the final version in a day). Versus the old way of asking them to write the contract, where they'll blatantly re-use some boilerplate (sometimes the name of a previous client's company will still be in there) and then take 2 weeks to get back to you with Draft #1, charging 10x as much.
  - cj 2y ago
    Good law firms won’t charge you for using their boilerplates, only the time to customize it for your use case. I anlways ask our lawyer whether or not they have a boilerplate when I need a contract written up. They usually do.
    - sebastiennight 2y ago
      That's interesting. I've never had a law firm be straightforward about the (obvious) fact they'll be using a boilerplate. I've even found that when lawyers send a document for one of my companies, and I give them a list of things to fix, including e.g. typos, the same typos will be in there if we need a similar document a year later for another company (because, well, nobody updated the boilerplate) Do you ask about the boilerplate before or after you ask for a quote?
      - cj 2y ago
        I typically don’t ask for a quote upfront since they are very fair with their business and billing practices. I could definitely see a large law firm (Orrick, Venable, Cooley, Fenwick) doing what you describe. I’ve worked with 2 firms just listed, and their billing practices were ridiculous. I’ve had a lot more success (quality and price) working with boutique law firms, where your point of contact is always a partner instead of your account permanently being pawned off to an associate. Email is in profile if you want an intro to the law firm I use. Great boutique firm based in Bay Area and extremely good price/quality/value.
- jprd 2y ago
  I bet they still charge for all the hours though.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
That opinion made sense two years ago. It's plain weird to still hold it today.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  There was a study recently that made it clear the use of LLMs for coding assistance made people feel more productive but actually made them less productive. EDIT: Added links. https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-anything-from-ai-coding-assistants.html https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-a... https://web.archive.org/web/20241205204237/https://llmreporter.com/posts/the-reality-of-ai-coding-assistants-are-they-helping-or-hindering-developers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241205204237/https://llmreport... (Archive link because the llmreporter site seems to have an expired TLS certificate at the moment.) No improvement to PR throughput or merge time, 41% more bugs, worse work-life balance...
  - mkl 2y ago
    Do you have a link? I'm not finding it by searching.
  - grogenaut 2y ago
    I recently slapped 3 different 3 page sql statements and their obscure errors with no line or context references from Redshift into Claude, it was 3 for 3 on telling me where in my query I was messing up. Saved me probably 5 minutes each time but really saved me from moving to a different task and coming back. So around $100 in value right there. I was impressed by it. I wish the query UI I was using just auto-ran it when I got an error. I should code that up as an extension.
    - mdtancsa 2y ago
      I am in a similar same boat. Its way more correct than not for the tasks I give it. For simple queries about, say, CLI tools I dont use that often, or regex formulations, I find it handy as when it gives the answer Its easy to test if its right or not. If it gets it wrong, I work with Claude to get to the right answer.

rusticpenn 2y ago

I use llms to do most of my dunki work.

tiahura 2y ago

LLMs have become indispensable for many attorneys. I know many other professionals that have been able to offload dozens of hours of work per month to ChatGPT and Claude.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
What on earth is this work that they're doing that's so resilient to the fallible nature of LLMs? Is it just document search with a RAG?
- tiahura 2y ago
  Everything. Drafting correspondence, pleadings discovery, discovery responses. Reviewing all of the same. Reviewing depositions, drafting deposition outlines. Everything that is “word processing,” and that’s a lot.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    Well that's terrifying. Good luck to them.
    - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
      To be honest, much of contract law is formal boilerplate. I can understand why they'd want to move their role to 'review' instead of 'generate'
      - drdaeman 2y ago
        So, instead of fixing the issue (legal documents becoming a barely manageable mess) they’re investing money into making it… even worse? This world is so messed up.
        randallsquared 2y ago
        They have no lever with which to fix the issue.
        Terr_ 2y ago
        Arguably the same problem is occurs in programming: Anything so formulaic and common that an LLM can regurgitate it with a decent level of reliability... is something that ought to have been folded into method/library already. Or it already exists in some howto documentation, but nobody wanted to skim the documentation.
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        Why not just move over to forms with structured input?
bad_haircut72 2y ago
Yeah the industries LLMs will disrupt the most are the ones who gatekeep busywork. SWE falls into this to some degree but other professions are more guilty than us. They dont replace intelligence they just surface jobs which never really required much intelligence to begin with.
sebastiennight 2y ago
As a customer of legal work for 20 years, it is also way (way way) faster and cheaper to draft a contract with Claude (total work ~1 hour, even with complex back-and-forth ; you don't want to try to one-shot it in a single prompt) and then pay a law firm their top dollar-per-hour consulting to review/amend the contract (you can get to the final version in a day). Versus the old way of asking them to write the contract, where they'll blatantly re-use some boilerplate (sometimes the name of a previous client's company will still be in there) and then take 2 weeks to get back to you with Draft #1, charging 10x as much.
- cj 2y ago
  Good law firms won’t charge you for using their boilerplates, only the time to customize it for your use case. I anlways ask our lawyer whether or not they have a boilerplate when I need a contract written up. They usually do.
  - sebastiennight 2y ago
    That's interesting. I've never had a law firm be straightforward about the (obvious) fact they'll be using a boilerplate. I've even found that when lawyers send a document for one of my companies, and I give them a list of things to fix, including e.g. typos, the same typos will be in there if we need a similar document a year later for another company (because, well, nobody updated the boilerplate) Do you ask about the boilerplate before or after you ask for a quote?
    - cj 2y ago
      I typically don’t ask for a quote upfront since they are very fair with their business and billing practices. I could definitely see a large law firm (Orrick, Venable, Cooley, Fenwick) doing what you describe. I’ve worked with 2 firms just listed, and their billing practices were ridiculous. I’ve had a lot more success (quality and price) working with boutique law firms, where your point of contact is always a partner instead of your account permanently being pawned off to an associate. Email is in profile if you want an intro to the law firm I use. Great boutique firm based in Bay Area and extremely good price/quality/value.
jprd 2y ago
I bet they still charge for all the hours though.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

That opinion made sense two years ago. It's plain weird to still hold it today.

JoshTriplett 2y ago
There was a study recently that made it clear the use of LLMs for coding assistance made people feel more productive but actually made them less productive. EDIT: Added links. https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-anything-from-ai-coding-assistants.html https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-a... https://web.archive.org/web/20241205204237/https://llmreporter.com/posts/the-reality-of-ai-coding-assistants-are-they-helping-or-hindering-developers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241205204237/https://llmreport... (Archive link because the llmreporter site seems to have an expired TLS certificate at the moment.) No improvement to PR throughput or merge time, 41% more bugs, worse work-life balance...
- mkl 2y ago
  Do you have a link? I'm not finding it by searching.
- grogenaut 2y ago
  I recently slapped 3 different 3 page sql statements and their obscure errors with no line or context references from Redshift into Claude, it was 3 for 3 on telling me where in my query I was messing up. Saved me probably 5 minutes each time but really saved me from moving to a different task and coming back. So around $100 in value right there. I was impressed by it. I wish the query UI I was using just auto-ran it when I got an error. I should code that up as an extension.
  - mdtancsa 2y ago
    I am in a similar same boat. Its way more correct than not for the tasks I give it. For simple queries about, say, CLI tools I dont use that often, or regex formulations, I find it handy as when it gives the answer Its easy to test if its right or not. If it gets it wrong, I work with Claude to get to the right answer.