Artificial intelligence language processing programs like ChatGPT are becoming so ubiquitous and widely utilized that they’re almost becoming a staple in everyday technology. 

While there’s no doubt that ChatGPT has proven to be quite useful for a variety of endeavors, including ones in the legal field, it’s also important to recognize that there are numerous limitations that exist with it as well. 

In this guide, we’ll cover which areas ChatGPT can assist with legal work and which areas it can’t, and then we’ll dive into how LexCheck can also assist legal teams with reviewing legal contracts and documents. 

What Is ChatGPT?

While most have heard of ChatGPT, it’s important to dive deeper into how it was developed and what it’s core purposes are. 

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research organization that was originally founded in December 2015. ChatGPT is designed to give answers to prompts provided to it. 

There are currently both free and paid subscription versions of ChatGPT available; the free version of ChatGPT is called GPT-4, while the premium paid verison is designated as GPT-4o.

ChatGPT and other similar chatbot tools are powered by LLMs or language learning models. An LLM is an algorithm that is based on natural language processing patterns. Long story short, an LLM will analyze significant volumes of text at once and, based on its analysis, attempt to predict the next word in a sentence. 

Once trained through repeated analyses across an extremely wide variety of niches, an LLM can ‘understand’ what is meant by a prompt and then provide a response or answer that sounds like it was written by a human. In reality, it is just assembling words, sentences, and paragraphs based on the most statistically likely answer based on the ChatGPT prompt.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have become enormously popular for professionals across many sectors and industries, including the legal field. However, it’s important to note that certain AI tools can offer more use cases for legal professionals than others. 

How Accurate Is ChatGPT for Legal Information?

You’re probably wondering how useful (and specifically, how accurate) ChatGPT is for providing legal information.

The short answer is simple: ChatGPT, and most other AI-powered chatbots like it, cannot be trusted to provide totally accurate information. That said, they can still be valuable tools for lawyers and legal teams on a limited basis (more on this below). 

The reason ChatGPT cannot always provide accurate information is also simple. As part of its programming, ChatGPT analyzes a number of online documents and legal texts, including contracts, briefs, judicial opinions, and legal articles and textbooks, to generate its information. 

But even so, ChatGPT has no way of knowing if the responses it is generating are right or wrong. Again, ChatGPT operates by generating text for its responses that is the most statistically likely. However, some of the information it analyzes from these online sources could be wholly inaccurate. 

This is why ChatGPT is capable of generating false information, which in the AI world is referred to as a hallucination. The reason it can hallucinate is because it analyzes patterns or data that it perceives to be correct.

The more AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT continue to evolve, the more accurate they become, and hallucinations are becoming less frequent. But it can still happen, and if lawyers are not careful and don’t conduct their own independent research, they can accept any output that ChatGPT generates as true. 

As noted above, ChatGPT can still be a valuable tool for lawyers and legal teams on a limited basis. In the next sections, we’ll dive into areas where ChatGPT should and shouldn’t be utilized by legal teams who opt to use it. 

How Can Legal Professionals Use ChatGPT?

So, how can ChatGPT be utilized to assist lawyers? Let’s explore the most common use cases:

Legal Research

ChatGPT can be used for legal research on a limited basis. Specifically, it can:

• Identify legal precedents and statutes
• Provided information on relevant case law 
• Summarize case law that can be used to support legal arguments 
• Provide information on the latest trends and developments going on in the legal industry

But remember, ChatGPT can still provide false information. You still will want to verify everything that it produces, and you’ll never want to rely on ChatGPT to cite court cases so you can avoid making the same mistake that the New York-based attorneys we mentioned above did. 

In short, ChatGPT can be used to help expedite or streamline the research process, but it’s still the responsibility of human lawyers to verify the research that it presents. 

Legal Documents

ChatGPT can also assist legal teams with reviewing and drafting legal documents. This is a very time-consuming (and mundane) task for legal professionals. ChatGPT can be used to generate the initial drafts of legal briefs or contacts, but only provided that the lawyer provides specific input parameters. 

Generating Citations

ChatGPT can also be used to generate or organize citations. For example, lawyers can provide ChatGPT with sources, and then, it can correct the format and organize those sources into a citation list. This alone can help lawyers save several hours of time.

Answering Common Legal Questions

ChatGPT can also be utilized to provide quick answers to very basic legal questions. For example, it can offer clear definitions and explanations of legal terms or basic legal concepts. But again, ChatGPT should not be used as a supplement for providing legal advice, nor should it be used to cite ‘real-life’ court cases. 

What Are the Ethical Considerations of ChatGPT for Legal Teams?

With the above information in mind, there are three really big areas where legal teams should NOT use ChatGPT. These are:

Don’t: Develop Legal Arguments With AI Tools

Lawyers can use ChatGPT as a starting point for collecting very basic legal information, but they should never go as far as to use it to develop their entire legal arguments. 

This mistake was made in June of 2023 when two New York-based attorneys submitted a filing with numerous citations to cases that didn’t even exist. The attorneys had used ChatGPT to perform the entirety of their legal research for the brief, and they did not check to see if the responses were correct. 

ChatGPT completely made up all of the cases that were ‘cited’ in the filing. As a result, the New York District Court Judge who was presiding over the case sanctioned both attorneys and their law firm.

Don’t: Use in Place of Seeking Legal Advice

Yes, ChatGPT can provide information on common legal questions and basic legal terms, but that’s about it. It cannot offer advice that is personalized or tailored to the specific legal situation of a person. 

That’s precisely why clients should always consult with a qualified attorney for all legal advice. Only a licensed lawyer can provide proper guidance and representation to clients and offer legal advice in the process. 

Don’t: Overlook the Expertise of Human Lawyers

ChatGPT is not equal to the expertise of human lawyers, and it should not be treated as such. As we’ll explore below, it can assist with some very basic and mundane tasks, but none of these will make it a replacement for human lawyers.

This is because, to put it simply, AI lacks the critical thinking and professional judgment that experienced attorneys have to offer. Human lawyers are needed to interpret complex legal issues, explain nuances, negotiate settlements, and advocate on the behalf of their clients in court. 

How Else Can Legal Professionals Utilize AI?

With these considerations in mind, it’s important for legal professionals to utilize AI tools that can support their work, including issue spotting and document review. This is where LexCheck comes in.

What Is LexCheck?

LexCheck is an advanced AI-driven technology platform that is tailored for legal teams. Specifically, it is designed from the ground up to streamline and enhance the process of contract review and negotiation. 

How Can LexCheck Help With Contract Review?

Before the advent of AI, legal teams had to spend countless hours (if not days or weeks) manually reviewing a contract being negotiated. This obviously takes away time and energy that could be spent on more complex tasks. 

LexCheck’s contract review software, however, is built to significantly reduce the time that lawyers need to spend reviewing contracts because the AI technology automates much of the contract review process. 

LexCheck will create a standardized playbook that legal teams can customize and will then apply that playbook to all contracts that are run through it.

Redlining and Issue Spotting

LexCheck can also be used to identify problematic terms or inconsistencies present in legal documents. 

Playbook Creation

LexCheck can be used to create legal playbooks, which are a compiled set of guidelines that are based on a legal team’s preferred negotiating positions. This means that legal teams can have access to standardized procedures. 

Risk Management

Last but not least, LexCheck can help legal teams mitigate potential risks by identifying issues in legal documents before they are submitted. These issues could include things like compliance problems, problematic or impractical obligations, or hidden risks.

The Bottom Line

In short, ChatGPT technology has a role to play when it comes to helping lawyers and legal teams. And while it can’t do everything, the use of AI can assist legal teams with research (to an extent), editing documents, generating citations, and answering very basic legal questions. 

Legal teams can also turn to alternative AI-powered software, such as LexCheck, for assistance in reviewing their legal documents and to minimize risk as well. 

Sources:

What is a large language model (LLM)? | Cloudflare

What Are AI Hallucinations? | IBM

Judge finds out why brief cited nonexistent cases—ChatGPT did research | ABA

The Implications of ChatGPT for Legal Services and Society | Harvard