While the thought of lawyers lawyering with AI gives me the icks, I also understand that at a certain point it may play out like the self-driving car argument: once the AI is good enough, it will be better than the average human – since I think it’s obvious to everyone that human lawyers make plenty of mistakes. So if you knew the average lawyer made 3.6 mistakes per case and the AI only made 1.2, it’s still a net gain. On the other hand tho, this could lead to complacency that drives even more injustice.
It’s hard to get into the article’s mood when I know that Lexis not only still exists but is now part of the Elsevier family; this is far from the worst thing that attorneys choose to do to themselves and others. Lawyers have been caught using OpenAI products in court filings and court appearances, and they have been punished accordingly; the legal profession does not seem prepared to let a “few hallucinated citations go overlooked,” to quote the article’s talking head.