4 ms·

As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week and most of the

by kozzion 2mo ago

As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week and most of them have 10-20 serious drafting errors on them. The most common ones are of the order of defining the same concept like 'a working day' in various conflicting ways without every specifying when which of the conflicting definitions should be used. Lawyers still have something to add to process but for every time they catch AI out on them, the machine is usually already 10-1 ahead.

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
I have the impression that most law firms consume and produce documentation by means of a cadre of paralegals who are minimally trained, minimally experienced, and maximally stressed by the pressure of deadlines and case loads. These paralegals are probably working to read hundreds of pages of legal filings and make sense out of them, and on the other end, they are working to produce as much documentation as possible and that's going to be by cut-and-paste assembly. So no, they are not going to understand stuff very well, and no, their output is not really going to be consistent or intelligible. But the managing attorneys depend on these paralegals to get anything done, just like Congresspeople rely on their staffers to actually read bills and draft legislation. At the end of the day, I think these paralegals have been quite weak links, and nearly nobody will notice a difference in quality when it's all handed over to LLMs. But the paralegals will lose their jobs, and probably have nothing better to do than purchase angle grinders and cut down Flock camera poles, or crown the front hood of Waymos with a traffic pylon.
- nradov 2mo ago
  It's really the junior associates doing most of that grunt work. Paralegals in most firms have more limited responsibilities. Some work has already been handed over to LLMs but the job market for graduates of first-tier law schools remains strong.
bonzini 2mo ago
But the real question is 1) whether other human lawyers would catch the error 2) in how much time 3) which of the errors introduced by AI vs. human would have bigger consequences. On 1 and 2 the answers are very likely to be "yes" and "it would take humans more time", but the question that really matters is 3.
- cognitiveinline 2mo ago
  Adversarial agents and reviews means 3 is very clearly giving the benefit to AI. Let's face it, only thing lawyers are there for right now is to take liability. And even that may not be needed 5 years from now. Middlemen that can be automated will be automated.
  - nradov 2mo ago
    Lawyers do a lot more than accepting liability. In my field they spend a lot of time on contract negotiation, and on interpreting what federal and state regulations actually require us to do.
tossandthrow 2mo ago
> most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. I think this extends to the other areas that AI is also disrupting. Software engineers are also absolutely terrible: In being sloppy with handling errors, doing coercions, etc. All because always engineering after best practice simply takes too much time and mental load. The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue. It can keep on, launch adversarial audits, make sure that everything is up to all standards.
- ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
  > The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue It's worse than mental fatigue. A friend had GLM 5.2 suddenly become dumb for hours. It started forgetting instructions, randomly inserted some bits in simplified chinese... Apparently throttled due to demand. there was tons of tokens left. (btw when your llm runs out of tokens is another example that's worse than fatigue) A tired programmer usually knows he's tired (and can take a break) and fucks up in more expected ways
  - tossandthrow 2mo ago
    > A tired programmer usually knows he's tired 6 months ago everybody talked about how AI was not able to plan their work. They could only do minor changes. The introspective property of knowing when you are "tired" and acting appropriately will likely be trivially observed in 6 months.
    - ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
      human fatigue is detected by sensory experience and there's no sensory experience for llms. so it can just guess. operators will never expose this guess to the user (who wants to pay for a tool that complains and refuses work?) so they probably will use it to load balance differently. and if they are out of resources then they can't load balance so they'll just hope you won't notice, so we're back to where we started. maybe it's already roughly how it works now... what's most likely in 6 months is a big correction in pricing, once they get people hooked up on this enough. maybe there will be a model that manages to detect when it's stupid but it won't be available outside FAANG and DOD
dozerly 2mo ago
Most people are terrible at what they do, period, regardless of profession.
matwood 2mo ago
> As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible This is many people at many jobs. We continue to see this weird thing when AI comes into an industry that suddenly the product being produced by the people was perfect/amazing/whatever. Maybe that's true for the majority of HN who are lucky enough to work with experts in every field, but in the general population that's simply not the case. Many doctors, lawyers, and programmers are not very good at their jobs - I've seen it first hand. AI gives the general population a way to steer around these people a bit, and maybe ask the right questions. Is it perfect? Nope, but it's often better than the people someone has access to.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  The problem is that a layman has no way to know if what the llm told them is better than experts around them, or even just remotely correct. A wrong response and a correct, informative, helpful response look exactly the same, the LLM will express the same level of confidence and will defend them in both cases. So, on one hand you can get an expert take that might be wrong, but is linked to an actual person, with a reputation and some level of ownership. On the other hand you have an over confident LLM that might be wrong and has no reputation, no ownership. How does that actually improve things compared to the older status quo?
  - perfectra1n 2mo ago
    This argument can be applied to anything LLM generated, and doesn’t pan out. An LLM can quickly respond with cases, interpretations, and standards in minutes as a defense to its claims. You can then independently research online if you believe those claims to be correct. With a lawyer you’re lucky to get a response back in less than a week and to have your name spelled correctly on the documents they return to you.
    - dgellow 2mo ago
      > This argument can be applied to anything LLM generated That's the whole point, yes. LLMs are inherently unreliable. Both human experts and LLMs are unreliable in their own ways. The human expert has a reputation and some level of responsibility, the LLM doesn't
zer00eyz 2mo ago
> most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week I hope the irony is lost on no one that "Attention Is All You Need" was the paper that kicked the LLM boom off. Part of the distinction between a how good one lawyer will be vs another is exactly that: attention to detail. And, as a trade, a practice, it seems like a skill that they try to hammer into the people who pursue this career (to varying degrees of success clearly). It makes the last 20 years of leet code hiring look downright wrong. Your ability to recall what sorting algo to use, or solve some brain teaser conveys nothing about your ability to read (massive amounts) of code, and think critically about it.
hmokiguess 2mo ago
Wonderful, I'm tired of lawyers. Happy to see that evolve and figure out how to provide actual value for its cost.

by kozzion 2mo ago

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago

I have the impression that most law firms consume and produce documentation by means of a cadre of paralegals who are minimally trained, minimally experienced, and maximally stressed by the pressure of deadlines and case loads. These paralegals are probably working to read hundreds of pages of legal filings and make sense out of them, and on the other end, they are working to produce as much documentation as possible and that's going to be by cut-and-paste assembly. So no, they are not going to understand stuff very well, and no, their output is not really going to be consistent or intelligible. But the managing attorneys depend on these paralegals to get anything done, just like Congresspeople rely on their staffers to actually read bills and draft legislation. At the end of the day, I think these paralegals have been quite weak links, and nearly nobody will notice a difference in quality when it's all handed over to LLMs. But the paralegals will lose their jobs, and probably have nothing better to do than purchase angle grinders and cut down Flock camera poles, or crown the front hood of Waymos with a traffic pylon.

nradov 2mo ago
It's really the junior associates doing most of that grunt work. Paralegals in most firms have more limited responsibilities. Some work has already been handed over to LLMs but the job market for graduates of first-tier law schools remains strong.

bonzini 2mo ago

But the real question is 1) whether other human lawyers would catch the error 2) in how much time 3) which of the errors introduced by AI vs. human would have bigger consequences. On 1 and 2 the answers are very likely to be "yes" and "it would take humans more time", but the question that really matters is 3.

cognitiveinline 2mo ago
Adversarial agents and reviews means 3 is very clearly giving the benefit to AI. Let's face it, only thing lawyers are there for right now is to take liability. And even that may not be needed 5 years from now. Middlemen that can be automated will be automated.
- nradov 2mo ago
  Lawyers do a lot more than accepting liability. In my field they spend a lot of time on contract negotiation, and on interpreting what federal and state regulations actually require us to do.

tossandthrow 2mo ago

> most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. I think this extends to the other areas that AI is also disrupting. Software engineers are also absolutely terrible: In being sloppy with handling errors, doing coercions, etc. All because always engineering after best practice simply takes too much time and mental load. The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue. It can keep on, launch adversarial audits, make sure that everything is up to all standards.

ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
> The real disruption from AI is likely that it does not get mentally fatigue It's worse than mental fatigue. A friend had GLM 5.2 suddenly become dumb for hours. It started forgetting instructions, randomly inserted some bits in simplified chinese... Apparently throttled due to demand. there was tons of tokens left. (btw when your llm runs out of tokens is another example that's worse than fatigue) A tired programmer usually knows he's tired (and can take a break) and fucks up in more expected ways
- tossandthrow 2mo ago
  > A tired programmer usually knows he's tired 6 months ago everybody talked about how AI was not able to plan their work. They could only do minor changes. The introspective property of knowing when you are "tired" and acting appropriately will likely be trivially observed in 6 months.
  - ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
    human fatigue is detected by sensory experience and there's no sensory experience for llms. so it can just guess. operators will never expose this guess to the user (who wants to pay for a tool that complains and refuses work?) so they probably will use it to load balance differently. and if they are out of resources then they can't load balance so they'll just hope you won't notice, so we're back to where we started. maybe it's already roughly how it works now... what's most likely in 6 months is a big correction in pricing, once they get people hooked up on this enough. maybe there will be a model that manages to detect when it's stupid but it won't be available outside FAANG and DOD

dozerly 2mo ago

Most people are terrible at what they do, period, regardless of profession.

matwood 2mo ago

> As a CTO of an Ai first law firm I would like to add that most human lawyers are absolutely terrible This is many people at many jobs. We continue to see this weird thing when AI comes into an industry that suddenly the product being produced by the people was perfect/amazing/whatever. Maybe that's true for the majority of HN who are lucky enough to work with experts in every field, but in the general population that's simply not the case. Many doctors, lawyers, and programmers are not very good at their jobs - I've seen it first hand. AI gives the general population a way to steer around these people a bit, and maybe ask the right questions. Is it perfect? Nope, but it's often better than the people someone has access to.

dgellow 2mo ago
The problem is that a layman has no way to know if what the llm told them is better than experts around them, or even just remotely correct. A wrong response and a correct, informative, helpful response look exactly the same, the LLM will express the same level of confidence and will defend them in both cases. So, on one hand you can get an expert take that might be wrong, but is linked to an actual person, with a reputation and some level of ownership. On the other hand you have an over confident LLM that might be wrong and has no reputation, no ownership. How does that actually improve things compared to the older status quo?
- perfectra1n 2mo ago
  This argument can be applied to anything LLM generated, and doesn’t pan out. An LLM can quickly respond with cases, interpretations, and standards in minutes as a defense to its claims. You can then independently research online if you believe those claims to be correct. With a lawyer you’re lucky to get a response back in less than a week and to have your name spelled correctly on the documents they return to you.
  - dgellow 2mo ago
    > This argument can be applied to anything LLM generated That's the whole point, yes. LLMs are inherently unreliable. Both human experts and LLMs are unreliable in their own ways. The human expert has a reputation and some level of responsibility, the LLM doesn't

zer00eyz 2mo ago

> most human lawyers are absolutely terrible. We review 100s of old contracts every week I hope the irony is lost on no one that "Attention Is All You Need" was the paper that kicked the LLM boom off. Part of the distinction between a how good one lawyer will be vs another is exactly that: attention to detail. And, as a trade, a practice, it seems like a skill that they try to hammer into the people who pursue this career (to varying degrees of success clearly). It makes the last 20 years of leet code hiring look downright wrong. Your ability to recall what sorting algo to use, or solve some brain teaser conveys nothing about your ability to read (massive amounts) of code, and think critically about it.

hmokiguess 2mo ago

Wonderful, I'm tired of lawyers. Happy to see that evolve and figure out how to provide actual value for its cost.