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We are seeing an increasing number of our clients and prospective clients using artificial intelligence (AI) when providing information to us in the course of our dealings with them. This brings issues.
Undoubtedly AI provides useful assistance with collating huge swathes of information and summarising. Clients are using AI to draft grievances, collate chronologies, draft internal employment appeals and similar. What some clients fail to understand however is that AI does not analyse real-world data and is no substitute for knowledge or professional advice. Large language models like ChatGPT are trained on internet text. It is a textual tool not an analytical device. They are also putting into the public domain private information with little regard for confidentiality.
It is a new frontier in providing legal advice when you have to do battle with a client who suggests that your advice may be wrong because AI tells them differently! AI is giving clients incorrect information about the merits of their claims and about the value of their claims (quantum).
At didlaw we do not use AI to draft advice, emails or documents. Every word that is written by our lawyers is the product of intelligent human thought based on years of experience and advice. AI cannot replicate this expertise (yet!) and it can be frustrating to fight with your own client as to why that might be.
Another issue with AI is the speed and volume at which it kicks out advice based on prompts provided by our clients. The prompts will dictate the output. Neutrality and balance are lost. What happens is our clients generate pages and pages of AI output and send it to us to read. When our clients do this we have to ask “do you really want me to read this?” because what they are in fact doing is inflating their legal costs by asking me to read information that is likely not necessary to their case or relevant to their situation. They think AI is helping but it is doing the opposite. It is making their lawyers read more data that adds little and if you are charging hourly rates this is a waste of costs.
It’s astonishing to see the rate of acceptance of AI and its use growing exponentially in a very short time. I wish my clients would realise that I would much rather hear about their experiences expressed in their own words. You lose a lot of meaning and nuance when you adopt a voice that is not your own. When it comes to giving witness evidence much could be lost here. I pray that my clients will realise that when they give evidence it should be in their own words not in language trained by an AI on internet text!
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