AI: The New Legal Frontier?

• Pages: 27-28
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Hon. Mark A. Drummond (Ret.)
• Subject Matter: Civil Law

Published in Litigation News Volume 48, Number 4, Summer 2 023. © 2023 by the Amer ican Bar Association . Reproduced with pe rmission. All rights re served. This info rmation or any porti on thereof may not be c opied or disseminated in an y

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By Hon. Mark A. Drummond (Ret.), Litigation News Associate Editor

“Therefore,wecall on all AI labs to immediately pause for

at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful

than GPT-4.”



Well, that stopped me. I was about to download the latest

articial intelligence (AI) system that might help me with this

column. For years my “technology” has been the thesaurus.

However, after reading that more than 1,000 technology leaders

and researchers were urging a pause, my download was on hold.

Images of HAL 9000, the Terminator, and Robocop gave

me pause. I could just see the New York Times lede: The take-

over of NORAD, our entire electric grid, and the distribution

system for Krispy Kreme donuts has been traced to an AI

download by a columnist writing for Litigation News.

But seriously, after reading what seemed to be an article a

day on AI, there are some real concerns. Concerns that impact

the work we do as attorneys. In my 40+ years as an attorney,

we have gone from carbon paper to Xeroxing to email. The

pandemic then drastically changed the way we do things. Little

did I think that we would see yet another sea change so soon.

AI: The New Legal Frontier?

Each concern begins with a sentence from a news article

followed by some scenarios on how AI might affect trial prac-

tice. My apologies for the number of question marks. I don’t

have many answers, only questions.

Law School

“GPT-4 didn’t just pass the bar exam—it scored in the 90th

percentile.”

The bar exam I took was pass/fail. Not sure if I was in the 90th

percentile. Probably not. Already there are do-it-yourself pro-

grams such as LegalZoom. These programs, combined with

competent and ethical AI, would be a powerful combination.

This could be an asset for those whose legal needs are under-

served. However, “human” attorneys should vet these before

clients start linking things like bank accounts to these platforms.

What algorithm will handle the balancing of ethical issues,

such as the outer limits of “zealous representation”? Ethics

opinions from different states can vary on the same subject.

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