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You don’t need a trained attorney to schematize data. The LLMs are used to make the data easier to understand and manipulate.
by juiceland 2mo ago
You don’t need a trained attorney to schematize data. The LLMs are used to make the data easier to understand and manipulate.
- cromka 2mo agoThey'll also hallucinate and change meaning in the process of extraction and "schematization"
- margalabargala 2mo agoNot necessarily. Depends how you use it. "Write a python script that breaks down this PDF by X feature" would not hallucinate anything in the PDF. Certainly you could trivially double check that all text in the extracted JSON was in the text layer of the PDF.
- jeffbee 2mo agoHow much experience do you have with LLMs exactly? It would be consistent with my experience if Claude stuck in a line of python that just emits a JSON literal with no justification, potentially buried in a large program where an untrained person might not notice it. I don't even trust them if the output consists of structured data paired with source images from the PDF, because I've experienced LLMs fabricating the source rectangles to match the output. I only use tools like this by asking for programs, because as you note LLMs are good at that, and the verification process consists of tool calls to legitimate PDF manipulation tools so I have some confidence everything is above board. Even then I only do this for hobbies, not anything that matters.
- terminalcommand 2mo agoLawyer here. I used to trust Claude as hallucinations are near non-existent now. However for large volume tasks such as due diligence exercises, they still happen. We also tried Legora's tabular review, there were also numerous halucinated provisions in our due diligence exercise.
- rayiner 2mo agoJunior associates hallucinate too...
- NateEag 2mo agoAnd when they do, you can train them or fire them, and they learn not to do it. LLMs change not a whit, and there's no one to take responsibility for the failure (and thus no way to fix it). As the new variation on the old theme has it, "A computer can never be held accountable, and so very many people are trying to get them make management decisions."
- IanCal 2mo agoYou can’t train people to never make a mistake, particularly when doing highly repetitive work like this. You must build your systems to account for that regardless.
- enraged_camel 2mo agoYes, exactly. Humans are non-deterministic as well, just in different ways. A tired human can make all sorts of errors for example, regardless of how much training they've had.
- NateEag 2mo agoFor sure. But they do learn and improve. The models don't (yet).
- hollerith 2mo agoThe models improve in the sense that GPT 5.6 succeeds at things GPT 5.5 fails at. It might be that the models have been improving in this sense faster than a human child improves.
- juiceland 2mo ago> LLMs change not a whit, and there's no one to take responsibility for the failure (and thus no way to fix it). LLM output is nondeterministic and humans take responsibility for the failure the same way they take responsibility of a photocopy is too dark.
- chrisjj 2mo agoThat's a recipe for disaster in my experience. I tried it (with Claude) on a simple tabular bank statement PDF, and it transposed two amounts, placinh each against the other's description. And the bot assured me the result was cotrect. The chance of a human checker catching such corruption is low.
- margalabargala 2mo agoInteresting. Did that PDF have a text layer or did you ask Claude to OCR it? If the latter I'm not surprised at all.
- chrisjj 2mo agoText layer.
- ferngodfather 2mo agoDoing similar-ish things with Claude, it's helpful to have something to ground it. For instance, if you can say: "Refer to the database schema in x.sql as your source of truth for the database structure we want to import into*. Do not invent data, tables or columns that do not exist. Carefully match all output against this database schema and do not create output that doesn't exist if it does not match the schema, simply skip it." You will end up with a far better result in my experience. Gotta treat it like a child.
- chrisjj 2mo ago> Gotta treat it like a child. "Sorry for that, Your Honour, but we gave that case prep work to a child."
- ivraatiems 2mo agoThey do, sometimes. That's why the review still has to happen. But now it's comparing already filled columns on a spreadsheet, not copy-pasting every single thing from an (often uncopyable) PDF.
- chrisjj 2mo ago> But now it's comparing already filled columns on a spreadsheet ... with a PDF, right? > not copy-pasting every single thing from an (often uncopyable) PDF Obviously the PDF is copyable, else your bot would not be copying it.
- ivraatiems 2mo ago"Copyable" in this case means you can highlight and copy paste text instead of manually retyping it.
- juiceland 2mo agoBut it gets it right like 99% of the time so human attention can be put towards catching the 1%, not entering data from one table to another and then catching that human’s mistakes.