MD attorneys see pros, cons in using ChatGPT in legal practice
attorney Nyasha West, who says she uses it primarily for marketing. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)” width=”200″ height=”300″ srcset=”https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-200×300.jpg 200w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-683×1024.jpg 683w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-768×1152.jpg 768w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-1024×1536.jpg 1024w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-1365×2048.jpg 1365w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-107×160.jpg 107w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-177×265.jpg 177w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-83×125.jpg 83w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-95×142.jpg 95w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-100×150.jpg 100w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-73×110.jpg 73w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-33×50.jpg 33w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Nyasha-West-080723-scaled.jpg 1707w” sizes=”(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px”/>ChatGPT “helps with everything,” said attorney Nyasha West, who says she uses it primarily for marketing. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
ChatGPT is taking the world by storm, prompting hosannas and hand-wringing over its ability to generate text nearly indistinguishable from human writing. It can streamline workflows, maximize work output and, possibly, replace workers en masse.
In the world of legal practice, ChatGPT has the potential to automate processes such as drafting and analyzing documents and suggesting revisions, among others.
“It helps with everything,” said Nyasha West of the West Law Firm in Lutherville, who nevertheless said she uses ChatGPT primarily for marketing.
“I went into the tool and said, ‘Create a marketing plan for a small personal injury firm attempting to compete with larger firms with a budget of $500 per month’ – and it spit out a marketing plan,” West said.
West’s office is also using ChatGPT to suggest topics for forthcoming promotional videos and articles and to create social media ads. Said West: “You can just put in a prompt: ‘Write a compelling Facebook ad for a victim of a car accident.’ ”
ChatGPT, an algorithm that has been “trained” with massive amounts of text data from the internet, uses a neural-like network to read and write language, basing the probability of a word’s occurrence on the previous words in a sequence.
RELATED: Lawyers submitted bogus case law created by ChatGPT. A judge fined them $5,000.
This does not mean ChatGPT knows all. Far from it. In fact, the program is known to “hallucinate,” or make up stories that appear realistic but are wholly invented by the chatbot.
A pair of New York lawyers discovered this the hard way this spring, as reported by The New York Times.
Steven A. Schwartz, representing a man who was suing an airline, used ChatGPT to write a brief that he submitted to U.S. District Court in Manhattan. But neither the airline’s lawyers nor the judge could find the decisions or quotations cited in the brief. Why? ChatGPT had made them up out of whole cloth – and neither Schwartz nor a colleague whose name was also on the brief had confirmed that the cases were legitimate.
attorney Art Renkwitz doubts ChatGPT will save him much time. "You’re going to check every single thing you did," he said. "You will spend the same amount of time doing it yourself." (SUBMITTED PHOTO)” width=”300″ height=”200″ srcset=”https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-300×200.jpg 300w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-1024×683.jpg 1024w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-768×512.jpg 768w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-1536×1024.jpg 1536w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-2048×1365.jpg 2048w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-200×133.jpg 200w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-398×265.jpg 398w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-188×125.jpg 188w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-225×150.jpg 225w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-120×80.jpg 120w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-50×33.jpg 50w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-180×120.jpg 180w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-600×400.jpg 600w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-1296×864.jpg 1296w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-972×648.jpg 972w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/1-ChatGPT-pic-of-Art-Renkwitz-468×312.jpg 468w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px”/>Maryland personal injury attorney Art Renkwitz doubts ChatGPT will save him much time. “You’re going to check every single thing you did,” he said. “You will spend the same amount of time doing it yourself.” (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
Like the judge in the New York case, attorney Art Renkwitz, of the Law Offices of Christopher M. Brannigan in Baltimore, was not amused.
“How do you not read the cases?” he exclaimed. “I would never in a million, zillion years cite a case I had not read.”
Renkwitz, who does not use ChatGPT at the personal injury firm, said he doubted the bot would save him much time.
“You’re going to check every single thing you did,” he said. “You will spend the same amount of time doing it yourself.”
RELATED: FTC investigating ChatGPT creator OpenAI over consumer protection issues
Jeffrey D. Katz, founder and managing partner of JDKatz P.C. in Bethesda, agreed that there was no excuse for not confirming the accuracy of ChatGPT’s output.
“This is no different from handing work off to an associate and not checking the work that they’ve done,” said Katz, whose firm specializes in estate planning and tax law.
!["Smart practitioners can do a lot with [ChatGPT]," said <a href=](https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-222x300.jpg)
attorney Jeffrey D. Katz. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)” width=”222″ height=”300″ srcset=”https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-222×300.jpg 222w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-759×1024.jpg 759w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-768×1036.jpg 768w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-1139×1536.jpg 1139w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-1519×2048.jpg 1519w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-119×160.jpg 119w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-197×265.jpg 197w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-93×125.jpg 93w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-105×142.jpg 105w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-111×150.jpg 111w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-82×110.jpg 82w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-37×50.jpg 37w, https://thedailyrecord.com/files/2023/08/ChatGPT-jump-pic-of-Jeffrey-D.-Katz-080723-scaled.jpg 1899w” sizes=”(max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px”/>“Smart practitioners can do a lot with [ChatGPT],” said attorney Jeffrey D. Katz. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)While calling ChatGPT not “ready for prime time” in legal research, Katz said it helped in other areas.
“You can plug in facts and elements of a case and ask, ‘Can you come up with an acronym for this?’” Katz said. “It’s useful when briefing a case or presenting a concept to a jury.”
Katz said ChatGPT was also handy in summarizing or even rewriting briefs.
“Smart practitioners can do a lot with Chat,” he said.
Katz emphasized, however, that lawyers should be aware of ChatGPT’s limitations and potential pitfalls.
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For one thing, he noted, Chat’s database hasn’t been updated since 2021, which – in addition to the program’s penchant for fiction-writing – limits its usefulness for case research. Katz also pointed out that information plugged into ChatGPT winds up in a public database, a crucial point for attorneys, who are bound to keep client information confidential.
“(ChatGPT) is a little bit of a facade; it looks a little smarter than it really is,” Katz said. “I think the technology is neat, but it’s got its limitations.”
While ChatGPT was released in late 2022, other artificial intelligence programs have been used in law firms for years.
Katz said his firm uses a system called Dialpad to transcribe telephone calls and analyze the tone of people’s voices, among other things. He uses a similar program, Read.AI, to do much the same with Zoom meetings.
An AI system can give perceptive feedback, Katz said.
“It does some coaching; it says you’re talking too fast or you’re monologuing,” he said. “It provides a lot of insight and helps you to follow up with things you may have missed.”
Katz also uses GrammarlyGO to analyze emails and generate replies.
He said the program can humanize messages from attorneys, who can often come across as brusque.
“I think that some of these AI systems are making responses a little more humanistic,” Katz said. “I think that these are great tools for lawyers.”
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