Breached Law Firms Bemoan: “the Class Action Attorneys Have Found Us”

• Publication year: 2023
• Citation: Vol. 49 No. 2

Breached Law Firms Bemoan: “The Class Action Attorneys Have Found Us” Vol. 49 No. 2 Pg. 25 Vermont Bar Journal June, 2023

by Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., John W. Simek, and Michael C. Maschke © 2023 Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Breached Law Firms Bemoan: "The Class Action Attorneys Have Found Us"

Remember the Golden Ticket from Willy Wonka?

A lot of lawyers thought they had discovered a golden ticket when they discovered ChatGPT. They were enthused about how fast it was and how they could utilize it for legal research, drafting legal documents, case analysis, legal compliance, composing client communications and the list goes on. It was dizzying in its speed and the conversational language was irresistible - and understandable.

Sadly, many lawyers did not comprehend that they were feeding confidential data to the AI, and that the history of their conversations with ChatGPT could be recalled and even used to train the AI.

If you were keeping an eye on developments, you might know that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, announced on April 25 that it had added the option to turn off chat history for ChatGPT, which meant you could keep your confidential data safe. But if you weren't watching developments -and many lawyers were not - you blithely went along feeding your data to the AI.

There was a reason that Apple and Samsung prohibited the use of generative AI -in Samsung's case...