Resilient, steadfast, proud… Through centuries the legal profession has managed to adapt and cater to the needs of society while remaining firmly rooted in the practices and traditions followed by those who came before.
However, every so often, a specific event, technological advancement or person completely shakes up the legal field and forces it to put tradition aside and accept that old school, might not be the best tool for the job.
In South African law, examples such as the codification of the Constitution, the implementation of Courts Online and Virtual hearings all come to mind as events that provoked a paradigm shift in the legal field. Once implemented and accepted, regression to the old ways was out of the question.
The recent and prolific rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and more especially ChatGPT begs the question of whether a new paradigm shift is upon us. Is it time to pack away the textbooks and caselaw in favour of a simple search on ChatGPT asking it to write a report, or identify relevant legislation or case law for you?
In order to understand how ChatGPT or other similar AI-based technology may benefit the legal field, we need to understand what ChatGPT is and what it can do. ChatGPT defines itself as “an AI language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, specifically GPT-3.5. ChatGPT is designed to understand and generate text based on the context provided to it. It can perform a variety of tasks, such as answering questions, providing explanations, offering suggestions, and engaging in interactive conversations. It can be a useful tool for information retrieval, language translation, content generation, and more.”
In short, ChatGPT aims to react to questions or instructions in a similar way to a person. However, the difference, and a major advantage is that unlike even the smartest person, ChatGPT has access to 175 billion parameters and over 570 GB of data.
That brings us to how AI and specifically ChatGPT can benefit South African Lawyers:
1. Legal Research: Chat GPT can search and analyse vast quantities of information in seconds, allowing it to process case law, legislation, legal precedents, and opinions, and by doing so saving lawyers time and money.
2. Drafting of Legal Documents: ChatGPT is able to take the information provided by the user and create drafts of legal documents with the information provided. Once a draft has been created, lawyers can use and modify this draft as needed and in doing so save time and money.
3. Legal Advice: ChatGPT is able to provide legal advice such as interpreting contracts, family law matters, and explaining or interpreting contracts.
4. Communicating with Clients: ChatGPT is able to take any information it is given, and explain it in a way that clients can understand. It can be instructed to explain legal terms or concepts to clients or to avoid using legal jargon altogether.
5. Furthering Legal Education: By having access to such a vast amount of information relating to the legal field, ChatGPT allows users to stay up to date with the latest cases, legislation, and legal news. It also allows users to ask for explanations and examples of concepts they may not understand and in turn allows users to improve their legal know how and understanding.
Given the many advantages of ChatGPT, it is important to understand that ChatGPT is not destined to replace human legal expertise but rather to act as a tool which can be used to simplify tasks in the legal field. It allows the user to filter through data quicker than a team of 50 or 100 people would be able to, and in doing so, greatly simplifies research and reading time.
It does however have limitations, and users should understand that although ChatGPT is immensely useful, the information it provides should serve as a starting point, which can then be modified or adapted to the user’s needs. ChatGPT cannot understand certain linguistic nuances and may as a result interpret instructions or questions differently than expected by the user. It may also struggle to find certain information in the event that the information required has only been made available very recently, or if there is very limited information available on a certain topic. ChatGPT’s knowledge is also limited by the dataset it has been created upon. If a request or instruction falls outside what it knows, the information provided may not always be that accurate.
In conclusion, ChatGPT has the potential to reshape the legal field, not only in South Africa, but around the world, by simplifying daily tasks, being more efficient in certain cases than people, and allowing users to automate responses and client interaction to a certain extent. It can greatly reduce time spent on research, while being able to cover vastly more information during its research than people, it is able to draft legal documents and assist in analysing case law or legislation in seconds.
Legal experts have been using precedents for years. ChatGPT has the potential to create legal presents with more accuracy than ever before and do so extremely quickly. Precedents, however, need to be reworked after considering the finest details of each matter which only a legal expert with experience can do.
ChatGPT does not aim to replace human expertise in the legal field, and at its current stage, it simply could not. It lacks the refinement necessary to understand that certain information provided may alter the way in which it should approach or generate its answer, and in certain instances, a good old traditional textbook will remain the best solution for the task at hand. But make no mistake, what ChatGPT is capable of doing is quite frankly astounding.
The information that is at everybody’s fingertips through ChatGPT and other AI models is astounding and can be overwhelming but without the knowledge of how to apply the information to the given situation, the information will not be useful. In the words of, Derek Sivers – “If information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”
As a legal tool, ChatGPT is revolutionary. A complete restructuring of what the legal field knows and understands to be the norm. Legal practitioners need to embrace the change and see how ChatGPT and AI can help them streamline their processes or face the real danger that they will become dinosaurs and obsolete in their own profession. People who are not legal professionals could face terrible outcomes if they choose to follow the prompts of ChatGPT or AI blindly. Likewise, legal practitioners who ignore the benefits of ChatGPT and its abilities, do so at their own peril. I say “get ready for the revolution”.