Tony Thai and Ashley Carlisle of HyperDraft, return to The Geek in Review podcast to provide an update on the state of generative AI in the legal industry. It has been 6 months since their last appearance, when the AI Hype Cycle was on the rise. We wanted to get them back on the show to see where we are on that hype cycle at the moment.
While hype around tools like ChatGPT has started to level off, Tony and Ashley note there is still a lot of misinformation and unrealistic expectations about what this technology can currently achieve. Over the past few months, HyperDraft has received an influx of requests from law firms and legal departments for education and consulting on how to practically apply AI like large language models. Many organizations feel pressure from management to "do something" with AI, but lack a clear understanding of the concrete problems they aim to solve. This results in a solution in search of a problem situation.
Tony and Ashley provide several key lessons learned regarding limitations of generative AI. It is not a magic bullet or panacea – you still have to put in the work to standardize processes before automating them. The technology excels at research, data extraction and summarization, but struggles to create final, high-quality legal work product. If the issue being addressed is about standardizing processes or topics, then having the ability to create 50 different ways to answer the issue doesn't create standards, it creates chaos.
Current useful applications center on legal research, brainstorming, administrative tasks – not mission-critical legal analysis. The hype around generative AI could dampen innovation in process automation using robotic process automation and expert systems. Casetext's acquisition by Thomson Reuters illustrates the present-day limitations of large language models trained primarily on case law.
Looking to the near future, Tony and Ashley predict the AI hype cycle will continue to fizzle out as focus shifts to education and literacy around all forms of AI. More legal tech products will likely combine specialized AI tools with large language models. And law firms may finally move towards flat rate billing models in order to meet client expectations around efficiency gains from AI.
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Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript
Observing the Black Box: Transcend's Brandon Wiebe's Insights into Governing Emerging AI Systems
Fast, Smart, and Empathetic: How DISCO's Culture Drives Legal Tech Innovation (TGIR Ep. 217)
Deploying Cutting-Edge Legal AI: Travers Smith's Cautious, But Open-source Approach. (TGIR Ep. 216)
Laura Leopard on Law Firms' Current Succession Planning: Step One - Do Nothing
Trellis' Nicole Clark on Leveraging State Court Data for Competitive Advantage (TGIR Ep. 214)
Thomson Reuters' Kriti Sharma on Responsible AI and the Path to Trusted Tech in Law
Cybersecurity in the Remote Work Era: AI, Employees and an Integrated Defense - With SessionGuardian's Jordan Ellington and Oren Leib, and Katten's Trisha Sircar
A Literal Generative AI Discussion: How AI Could Reshape Law
The Rise of "Post-Truth" Litigation: ALM's Isha Marathe on How Deep Fakes Threaten the Legal System
The Rising Cost of Legal Services: Insights from 10 Years of Data from CounselLink's Kristina Satkunas
Curt Meltzer on Why Legal Tech Companies Should Give Back: The Business Case for Pro Bono, A2J, and Community Outreach
Christian Lang on Governing the Rise of LLMs: How LEGA Provides a Safe Space for Law Firms to Use AI (TGIR Ep. 206)
Michael Bommarito on Preparing Law Students for the Future, and His Quest on Bringing Order to the Chaos of Legal Data (TGIR Ep. 205)
Unleashing Potential: Laura Terrell on Transforming Legal Careers through Executive Coaching (TGIR Ep. 204)
LexisNexis Bets Big on AI Transforming the Legal Industry: Jeff Pfeifer on the Launch of Lexis+ AI (TGIR Ep. 203)
Lawyer vs. AI or Lawyers + AI: Embracing the Future of Legal Practice with BriefPoint.ai's Nathan Walter and Bridget Albiero
Richard Tromans on the Future of Legal Innovation and The Legal Innovators California Conference (TGIR Ep. 201)
Rethinking Law Firm Strategy: The Road to Growth and Success with Toby Brown and Nita Sanger (TGIR Ep. 200)
Revolutionizing Legal Practice: The Impact of CaseText's CoCounsel on Law and Technology with Pablo Arredondo, Evan Shenkman, and Darth Vaughn (TGIR Ep. 199)
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