Generative AI and the Appellate Practitioner
One thing that I love about the practice of law is that it seems to be always changing. When I entered law school, we were just going through the transition from law books to internet-based research. In my first year of law school, we were trained on both. We learned how to conduct legal research the old-fashioned way (using legal encyclopedias, the Northeastern Reporter, Shepard’s Citations, etc.). We then repeated the same research using Lexis and Westlaw online.
By the time I hung my shingle as a new lawyer, the practice had fully transitioned to internet-based research, in that pretty much everyone knew it was the quicker way to do legal research. The only problem? It was still very expensive. So many of us just building our businesses were still stuck in the library stacks. Eventually, the cost of internet-based research became affordable.
We are now in a similar transition in the legal practice with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GAI). GAI is artificial intelligence that can generate new content based on the patterns and data it learned from existing content.
There has been a ton of discussion about the role GAI can play in the legal practice, particularly after GPT-4 was able to pass part of a state bar exam. Law-specific GAI tools like Lexis+ AI and CoCounsel by Casetext can act as a virtual paralegal or legal assistant.
The only problem? They are still very expensive for the solo or small-firm practitioner. Tools like GPT-4 are affordable, but they cannot do the legal research necessary for an appellate practice. Believe me, I tried :) I asked GPT-4 to complete a simple task: to summarize an Indiana Supreme Court case I was very familiar with. It responded that it had no access to legal databases.
While it may not be useful right now in some areas of my practice, it can be useful in others. It can proofread and edit text. It can also summarize blocks of text as well. This may be one workaround for the lack of legal research capabilities. It can’t find and summarize a case only by providing a citation. But if I cut and paste the text, it can summarize it.
Preparing presentations for continuing legal education seminars is another way GAI can help. I can plug in my notes I have created, and GPT-4 will create an outline for me.
It can also research general topics relevant to the practice of law. For example, I am currently researching shaken baby syndrome and where it all started. GPT-4 has been very helpful in answering research questions and identifying resources to review.
Finally, GAI can draft letters, emails, blog posts, and social media content, and complete other administrative tasks to make your practice more efficient.
If you have the means to pay an extra $150-400 per month for Lexis+ AI or CoCounsel by Casetext, those tools can do so much to assist the appellate practitioner. They can draft legal documents, summarize cases, prepare deposition outlines, create case timelines, and analyze documents you upload directly. Even if you are not yet ready to take the plunge, consider affordable GAI tools such as GPT-4.