Beware of Ethical Perils When Using Generative Ai

• Publication year: 2023
• Citation: Vol. 46 No. 3 Pg. 28
• Pages: 28

Beware of Ethical Perils When Using Generative AIVol. 46 No. 3 Pg. 28Wyoming Bar JournalJune, 2023

by Sharon D. Nelson,Esq.,JohnW. Simek, and MichaelC.Maschke

Generative AI is Alluring to Lawyers, but is it Safe?

According to a Lexis Nexis survey released in March 2023, 60% of lawyers have no plans to use generative AI at the present time. Considering that OpenAI's ChatGPT was only released in November of 2022, that's not particularly surprising. Lawyers are certainly not noted for rapidly adopting new technology.

What's astonishing to us is how many lawyers HAVE started working with generative AI, most often ChatGPT, which will largely be the focus of this article. Google's Bard and Microsoft's Bing Chat (based on ChatGPT) are still edged out by OpenAI's ChatGPT in studies—and our own unscientific observation is that far more lawyers are using ChatGPT compared to its rivals. ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever released with over 100 million active users just two months after its release.

We have been bombarded with requests to present webinars on how lawyers can use ChatGPT in their law practice—in the seminars presented thus far, lawyers have peppered us with questions about how generative AI can be used by lawyers AND questions about its ethical and cybersecurity ramifications.

How is it being used? Our very incomplete list includes prediction of case outcomes, ediscovery, brief composition, contract review, legal research, brief analysis, writing briefs, predictive analytics, deposition questions, document review, billing and litigation support, due diligence, jury screening, online dispute resolution and composition of emails.

Validate, Validate, Validate

What ChatGPT writes is generally well written. But taking it at face value as the truth would be a mistake. And yes, the human tendency is to do just that.

This was noted by Allen & Overy, which is in the process of globally rolling out...