83,106
edits
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{essay|work|Large Learning Model|{{image|jaws|png|Lawyer and chatbot, yesterday.}} }}Once meant a Master of Laws degree, a sensei in the ninjahood of legal services. Now all one needs for that kind of excellence is another kind of LLM — a large learning model. The legal profession is, we hear, to ChatGPT as Chrissie Watkins was to Jaws. Because it does not ask this question: “cui bono?” 1. It is a truism that she who has a tool uses it, firstly, for her own be...") |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{essay|work|Large Learning Model|{{image|jaws|png|Lawyer and chatbot, yesterday.}} }}Once meant a Master of Laws degree, a sensei in the ninjahood of legal services. Now all one needs for that kind of excellence is another kind of LLM — a large learning model. The legal profession is, we hear, to ChatGPT as Chrissie Watkins was to Jaws. | {{essay|work|Large Learning Model|{{image|jaws|png|Lawyer and chatbot, yesterday. You decide which is which.}} }}Once meant a Master of Laws degree, a sensei in the ninjahood of legal services. Now all one needs for that kind of excellence is another kind of LLM — a large learning model. The legal profession is, we hear, to ChatGPT as Chrissie Watkins was to Jaws. | ||
Because it does not ask this question: “cui bono?” | Because it does not ask this question: “cui bono?” | ||
1. It is a truism that she who has a tool uses it, firstly, for her own benefit. | 1. It is a truism that she who has a tool uses it, firstly, for her own benefit. | ||
2. Now, a commercial lawyer’s business model is predicated on two things: | |||
:(1) time. | |||
:(2) ineffability. | |||
3. It is a happy accident that, generally, (2) begets (1). | |||
The more ineffable something is, the longer it takes. | |||
The longer it takes, the more you can charge. | |||
Simple. | |||
(3A. Hence there is no profit-motivated legal firm on the planet that really cares for plain English. | |||
Oh, they all say, they do, of course, but come on. | |||
Have you ever read law firm boilerplate? | |||
Anyway, I digress.) | |||
4. It will be lawyers who have [[ChatGPT]] to use as a tool, not their clients. | |||
Why? Because [[ChatGPT]] is a pattern-matching device. It understands nothing. It cannot provide unmediated legal advice. It is a “back-breaker”: the “last mile” needs a human who knows what she is doing. | |||
5. In the legal world, that “human who knows what she is doing” is called a lawyer. She works for a law firm. | |||
6. Recall the truism that she who has a tool uses it primarily for her own benefit. Recall how lawyers measure their benefit: (1) time. (2) ineffability. | |||
7. Now a “last mile” lawyer ''could'' use [[ChatGPT]] to simplify documents, accelerate research and break legal problems down to significant essences, thereby reducing the cost, and increasing the value, of her service to her clients. | |||
8. ''OR'' she could use [[ChatGPT]] to further complicate documents, convolute language, invent new options, create new contingencies: to build infinitesimal detail into her work that it was just too hard to do manually. | |||
9. Which, realistically, do we expect a self-respecting lawyer to do? Simplify, or complicate? To sacrifice time *and* ineffability for the betterment of the wider world? Or to invest in a free option to generate ''more'' of the stuff? | |||
(9A. Remember our digression: for 40 years we’ve had technology — Microsoft Word — which could be used to simplify and speed up legal work product. | |||
But that would sacrifice time and ineffability. And not one of them did that. | |||
They all did the exact opposite.) | |||
10. You can already see the effect LLMs are having on legal work product. NDAs are getting longer, and worse. | |||
11. Chat GPT may disrupt a lot of things, but it won’t be disrupting the legal profession any time soon. | |||
12. Bear in mind ''who'' ChatGPT would be disrupting in this case. Two things about consumers of high-end commercial legal services. | |||
:(1) Most of them — us — are lawyers | |||
:(2) As lawyers they — we — take pride in the ability to work with difficult, complicated things. Convolution is a measure of our worth. The love of convolution for its own sake, for what it says about us, is a strong common value between lawyers and their commercial clients. | |||
13. Lawyers — inhouse or out — are the jazz aficionados of text; cineastes of syntax. Overwrought contracts are expected: nothing says “prudent management of existential risk” like forty page of 10pt Times Roman. Plain language is not for serious people. | |||
14. That is to say, neither fee-earning lawyers nor their immediate clients want plain contracts. If they did, we would already have them. |