[namelessoracle]

For all the consternation about Copilot and AI coding tools, its looking like legal work is as much if not more setup for disruption.

Document review is already being done by AI, lawyers are using AI to beef up closing arguments and review arguments, AI researchers to go through the relevant cases for citations have been worked on for awhile.

Lawyers being lawyers have immediately reached to "make it illegal" and setting up protections for their trade like they always done. Roberts is commenting that they are going to be disappointed if they think they can get legal protections that X or Y must always be done by a human.

[Spooky23]

Worse, judges are writing decisions and evaluating cases based on this.

The problem is that we’re going to have people litigating court cases and stupid bureaucratic nonsense within companies by lobbing nonsense that nobody has read at each other. Everyone will wink and nod, but these organizations and institutions will be exponentially more clueless.

As technologists, it’s easy to shrug. What do you do when a judge takes your kid away after using an LLM to read and interpret bullshit generated case notes that a CPS worker generated with another LLM?

[jprete]

Technologists are spectacularly bad at understanding how much the system relies on trusting that people will do something vaguely reasonable/legal/prosocial, just how that trust is built up and preserved, and how fragile that trust really is. A lot of Big Tech disruption and moneymaking has been based on ignoring this point to consume systemic trust without replenishing it.

[namelessoracle]

This already happens to an extent though?

Replace LLM with "clerk" and "generated case notes" with "copy pasted from my standard legally approved phrasing" playbook. Government workers who fill out standard reports already have standard forms pre filled with the results they know they are landing out, with certain sections that differ ready to be edited while the rest stays the same, look at things like warrants as an example. When I worked a government job i was literally handed templates by my supervisor of "pre approved ways to phrase things", that they percieved would help avoid lawsuits or any contest.

[Spooky23]

The difference is that when you fuck up, you or your supervisor will be held accountable. Everything is fine until it isn’t.

With the LLM, everyone will clutch their pearls and be shocked.

[nonethewiser]

> The problem is that we’re going to have people litigating court cases and stupid bureaucratic nonsense within companies by lobbing nonsense that nobody has read at each other.

At an abstract level, this sounds like a precursor to war. Everyone has competing interests and the peaceful way to resolve them is communication. When that stops force starts.

Maybe the out is that there is some automated sense of listening and agreement.

[narrator]

I think judges will continue to enjoy sanctioning lawyers for quoting fake cases. It's pretty easy to check if the citations are real or not. The legal system is not some API you can just spam with bullshit. There are serious consequences for doing that. The fun part comes when the Woke API refuses to make arguments for case law that goes against its woke programming.

[vmfunction]

What you are describing has being happening for a long time in tech. It was suppose to make our life easier and do things we don't want to do, but has it? Seems like we are just become salves of digital technologies now days.

Instead what we got instead are surveillance capitalism and now this LLM/AI stuff that becomes much better are emulating human behaviour and languages. UX in software has NOT improved, and I dare to say it has gotten worse. Just feel the performance of iOS 6 on iPod touch vs the lates iOS. Tech over quarter century has just tech getting more complex, and made more easily to centralised and consolidate control. Is this what we really want?

[ClarityJones]

> Lawyers being lawyers have immediately reached to "make it illegal" and setting up protections for their trade like they always done.

The legal field does not have a strong cartel at the moment.

In 1940 and in 1970, the population of lawyers was about .13-.16% of people in the US. Currently, it's 3x higher at .39%... after 3 years of declining numbers.

The market is saturated. Large numbers of lawyers can't find enough work, or have moved to other fields.

Edit: Link to report: https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/year-end/2023year-en...

[namelessoracle]

Try setting up a business for something relatively minor like helping people contest a traffic ticket (no representing them in court) and see what happens. You dont need a full legal education to do basic contestation of traffic tickets, but the legal system requires it.

There is a plethora of things that are minor, don't require going to court, and can be handled via bog standard forms and documents that are just "replace the names" and that lawyers have their paralegals do for them in their entirety. But the paralegal cant go into business on their own can they?

What is the equivalent of the nurse who can get you antibiotics in the US legal system?

[ClarityJones]

You raise a very worthwhile topic, because both fields have expanded, and they have expanded along very different paths.

The medical field has splintered. Osteopaths kind of invented their own thing and broke into medical doctors' monopoly. Registered Nurses can do some things, but not others. BSNs. CNAs. Nurse Practitioners. Physicians Assistants. Chiropractors. etc. The strength of their cartel has led to attacks by new and novel qualifications, and the compelling need for more medical providers has allowed these attacks to successfully carve out roles.

Some can prescribe medications, others can't. Some are limited to specific medications. Others can perform surgery, others can't. Some can diagnose diseases, etc. Moreover, some qualifications are a step toward a higher qualification, others are traps that don't progress you to an MD/DO at all.

The legal field seems far more egalitarian in that any lawyer can practice any area of law (except patent law), and people can generally represent themselves and their minor children without any qualifications. Folk don't need a lawyer to contest tickets, or to draft contracts that they're a party to, or to negotiate their own settlements, etc.

However, appallingly, the general public is not allowed to prescribe medicine for themselves or their children. Folks cannot buy contacts / glasses on their own, etc. Folks shouldn't need a nurse to get antibiotics for ourselves, and yet we do.

[Ancapistani]

> Folks cannot buy contacts / glasses on their own

That's news to me.

[ClarityJones]

Yeah, in the US, customers need permission from an optometrist.

Edit: When buying for nearsightedness.

[hollerith]

Some eyeglasses do not require permission (prescription) in the US, including bifocal and progressive lenses.

[codingdave]

Nurse practitioners have as much, if not more, education than attorneys. And they still need to work within the regulations of our system.

I get what you are trying to communicate - maybe we are over-regulated... yet any time your professional work has the potential to harm your customer if done incorrectly, I don't think having some educational requirements are unreasonable.

[ceejayoz]

> What is the equivalent of the nurse who can get you antibiotics in the US legal system?

A paralegal. In about half the US, said nurse practicioner must be working under a supervising doctor, just like the paralegal works under a supervising lawyer.

[namelessoracle]

> In about half the US

So there isn't one.

[ceejayoz]

Paralegals and NPs are similar in this regard in about half the country.

NPs can independently practice - to some extent - in the other half.

(You'll find a lot of paralegals coming very close to practical indepdendent practice, though. Supervision can be quite theoretical.)

[CapitalistCartr]

Also using AI (ChatGPT) to write briefs, appeals, etc. Just edit. Saves a lot of time, which reduces the number of paralegals needed. This ship has already sailed. But it does not eliminate the need for a well-trained person to edit and review.

[ExoticPearTree]

You will need really trained people to review whatever the AI writes and also need to be able to check sources in case the AI hallucinates and starts referencing made up case law or precedents. So maybe paralegals will transform into reviewers or something similar.

[namelessoracle]

this is how document review works now basically. It used to be lots of lawyers got hired to go through the documents, now AI does it, and flags things for actual lawyer to review (along with suggestions), so what was the work of a couple of dozen lawyers is like maybe 2.

this is one of the huge issues for the unemployed lawyer problem, as those jobs were the entry level for straight of school lawyers. I expect similar problems with dev roles coming soon.

[amalcon]

The editing and review part is critical. Judges really have not liked it when completely fictitious citations ended up in court filings...

[amalcon]

Indeed. Legal documentations are much more shared-source than software, by nature. Most agreements need to be in the possession of multiple parties and their attorneys in a reviewable form, for example, and court filings make the most contentious of such agreements public record.

This is a massive boon to the training data set. GitHub is also massive, but legal has other systemic advantages as well (e.g. being similar to past work is a structural advantage rather than just a practical one).

[ryandvm]

Agreed. LLMs seem almost purpose built for the boilerplate part of legal work. "Read this user agreement and point out any unusual or particularly risky clauses."