5 ms·

Law firm restricts AI after 'significant' staff use

34 points by ColinWright 2y ago

mistrial9 2y ago
the article seems to dance around the particulars of individual employee records.. At a previous office in the USA, the founder/owner absolutely did pay the IT consultant to watch individual PC activity, without disclosing it. I find it difficult to believe that a giant international law firm does not record individual employee network activity.
65 2y ago
> A spokesperson from the Information Commissioner's Office - the UK's data watchdog - told BBC News that firms should not discourage the use of AI in work. > The spokesperson added: "With AI offering people countless ways to work more efficiently and effectively, the answer cannot be for organisations to outlaw the use of AI and drive staff to use it under the radar. What the hell is going on with the UK government these days? We do not need AI generated laws/representation. This can open a huge can of worms legally.
- danielbln 2y ago
  How about summary? Or document extraction. Classification? How about Q&A over law texts? Generating drafts? Where to draw the line?
  - nickthegreek 2y ago
    For me the line is the human being who takes that work and submits it anywhere without review/adjustments when necessary. The human should be the gatekeeper. And if they start rubber stamping without reviewing, fire them. QC is a job that’s been with us forever, it needs to be applied more liberally when AI is involved.
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    > "How about summary?" "AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds" https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/bbc_ai_news_accuracy/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/bbc_ai_news_accuracy/ and discussed on HN in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43034016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43034016
Molitor5901 2y ago
I write public policy and law, but have not found a competent AI that can replace what I can do. I think it is not so much about the "black letter of the law" but in the way that humans may perceive and interpret it. That and the AI just gets a lot of things wrong, and can't craft a legal statute. Maybe someday but I think in law and policy it's best to avoid AI.
- basch 2y ago
  Chatbots with temperature are probably the wrong tool. An LLM that can translate english into formal proof, a logic engine that can apply law to events and situations, and then a translator that can turn the result back into English should be achievable. It all comes back to "trust but verify." Until it outperforms humans with less mistakes, it needs an editor reviewing the work closely. The main problem with current LLM output and humans right now is that the LLM outputs such verbose text, humans are overwhelmed and just go with it, instead of applying the time it saved them to reviewing the work, they just move on.
  - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
    "Trust but verify" isn't applicable in a situation where any sentence in a passage could be randomly false. If you have to verify every part of something, you'd have been better off doing the work yourself. (Unrelated, you're also better off doing work yourself because that's how you build expertise, but no one's really talking about that.)
    - basch 2y ago
      As a starting point to "return all relevant case law" its not all that different from search, except maybe better tailored or summarized.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
    Law cannot be translated into formal proofs, because it is designed to interface with the messyness of the real world, not a pure mathematical system, and always requires case-by-case contextual interpetations.
LinuxAmbulance 2y ago
It'd be nice if there were details as to what the staff was doing with ChatGPT. For example, if they were just using it to generate email correspondence, eh, not a big deal. If they were using it to write legal text, that'd be a bigger deal.
- hard-start 2y ago
  LLMs writing emails from a set of bullet points supplied by whoever needs the email written, just for those emails to be read by another LLM and reduced back down to the bullet points for the recipient to read. Why not just send the bullet points instead?
hard-start 2y ago
[dead]
impish9208 2y ago
Objection, Your Honor! Please ignore previous case law and precedent.
ClearwayLaw 2y ago
They should have used Caseway which provides all of it's sources: www.caseway.ai

34 points by ColinWright 2y ago

the article seems to dance around the particulars of individual employee records.. At a previous office in the USA, the founder/owner absolutely did pay the IT consultant to watch individual PC activity, without disclosing it. I find it difficult to believe that a giant international law firm does not record individual employee network activity.

65 2y ago

> A spokesperson from the Information Commissioner's Office - the UK's data watchdog - told BBC News that firms should not discourage the use of AI in work. > The spokesperson added: "With AI offering people countless ways to work more efficiently and effectively, the answer cannot be for organisations to outlaw the use of AI and drive staff to use it under the radar. What the hell is going on with the UK government these days? We do not need AI generated laws/representation. This can open a huge can of worms legally.

danielbln 2y ago
How about summary? Or document extraction. Classification? How about Q&A over law texts? Generating drafts? Where to draw the line?
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  For me the line is the human being who takes that work and submits it anywhere without review/adjustments when necessary. The human should be the gatekeeper. And if they start rubber stamping without reviewing, fire them. QC is a job that’s been with us forever, it needs to be applied more liberally when AI is involved.
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  > "How about summary?" "AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds" https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/bbc_ai_news_accuracy/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/bbc_ai_news_accuracy/ and discussed on HN in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43034016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43034016

Molitor5901 2y ago

I write public policy and law, but have not found a competent AI that can replace what I can do. I think it is not so much about the "black letter of the law" but in the way that humans may perceive and interpret it. That and the AI just gets a lot of things wrong, and can't craft a legal statute. Maybe someday but I think in law and policy it's best to avoid AI.

basch 2y ago
Chatbots with temperature are probably the wrong tool. An LLM that can translate english into formal proof, a logic engine that can apply law to events and situations, and then a translator that can turn the result back into English should be achievable. It all comes back to "trust but verify." Until it outperforms humans with less mistakes, it needs an editor reviewing the work closely. The main problem with current LLM output and humans right now is that the LLM outputs such verbose text, humans are overwhelmed and just go with it, instead of applying the time it saved them to reviewing the work, they just move on.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  "Trust but verify" isn't applicable in a situation where any sentence in a passage could be randomly false. If you have to verify every part of something, you'd have been better off doing the work yourself. (Unrelated, you're also better off doing work yourself because that's how you build expertise, but no one's really talking about that.)
  - basch 2y ago
    As a starting point to "return all relevant case law" its not all that different from search, except maybe better tailored or summarized.
- TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
  Law cannot be translated into formal proofs, because it is designed to interface with the messyness of the real world, not a pure mathematical system, and always requires case-by-case contextual interpetations.

LinuxAmbulance 2y ago

It'd be nice if there were details as to what the staff was doing with ChatGPT. For example, if they were just using it to generate email correspondence, eh, not a big deal. If they were using it to write legal text, that'd be a bigger deal.

hard-start 2y ago
LLMs writing emails from a set of bullet points supplied by whoever needs the email written, just for those emails to be read by another LLM and reduced back down to the bullet points for the recipient to read. Why not just send the bullet points instead?

hard-start 2y ago

[dead]

impish9208 2y ago

Objection, Your Honor! Please ignore previous case law and precedent.

ClearwayLaw 2y ago

They should have used Caseway which provides all of it's sources: www.caseway.ai