Artificial intelligence (AI) offers unprecedented opportunities for almost every field, such as education, research and development, arts and literature, and science and technology. ChatGPT is one of the latest developments in the field of Information Technology.
It was introduced in November 2022. ChatGPT is an advanced form of Chatbot. It is a system of AI that has the capability of communicating with humans. It can answer any questions or requests through its conversational dialogue interface.
Lawyers and law firms have to do hectic research work. They need to find relevant laws and references from the vast law books and thousands of legal decisions of the Courts to build a strong case for their clients. It needs quite an effort to do so. It also consumes many work hours. But without proper research, they cannot prepare their case and get a favorable decision for their clients.
ChatGPT has made this research work easy for lawyers. It facilitates them to find out the required references and laws. It can generate precise content for a particular legal case. This latest technology is proving very helpful for the lawyer community.
Understanding ChatGPT
GPT stands for “Generative Pretrained Transformer” It is an advanced language model used in artificial intelligence for chatbot technology. The first version of chatGPT was launched using GPT 3.5 in November 2022. It has been upgraded to GPT 4 just recently.
This chatbot has the capacity to respond to the simplest to most complex queries in a human-like conversational style. It generates responses in simple human-like language. It can also respond to follow-up questions in ongoing chats. It also can reject inappropriate questions.
How ChatGPT Works?
Source: mycase.com
First of all, it tries to understand what is being asked by the user. Then it analyses the prompt using the data on which this chatbot was initially trained. Training refers to the process where the bot is provided with basic rules and a huge volume of data to work with.
The first version of ChatGPT was based on GPT 3, which was educated with more than 500 billion tokens. A token is a set of commonly used text sequences consisting of 4 characters each. This huge data facilitates the chatbot to understand the prompt and generate possible responses.
Application of ChatGPT in Legal Research
Law firms and legal professionals need to do a lot of research to make a strong legal case that can be contested in a competent Court of law. For this purpose, they have to consult so many books and references, which is a time-consuming affair. ChatGPT for law firms can save time and effort. You can learn more about it here.
Lawyers can use this chatbot for doing this research work. It provides credible information by searching a huge volume of data, comprising hundreds of law books and legal references. The outcome is precise and relevant. This saves the time and effort of the lawyers in searching various legal documents and verifying the facts of the legal case.
Based on this research, ChatGPT can draft the legal content and make required summaries and contracts. The time and energy saved through this process can be used to improve the overall performance and efficiency of a lawyer or the law firm.
Here are some of the possible uses of ChatGPT by lawyers.
- Contracts – ChatGPT can indicate relevant clauses and basic terms and conditions of any required contract. It can also facilitate the lawyers to analyze the contract using its vast database.
- Case study – It relates to research work that a layer needs to build up his case. ChatGPT can provide you a piece of comprehensive case-specific information. It will provide you with all relevant laws and references for preparing the required response on that particular case.
- Due diligence –ChatGPT will provide all the required information about the case under reference. This will help you to carry out the required due diligence that may save you from legal complications and unwarranted consequences.
- Legal Drafting – Legal drafting is quite a technical piece of writing. ChatGPT can generate a complete and flawless legal draft based on the information.
Limitations of ChatGPT
Source: forbes.com
- Being a new technology, it is still in the developing stage. So, there’s every possibility that the responses may not be super accurate in some cases.
- As with all artificial intelligence applications, ChatGPT works on the data and information on which it was trained. In complex legal matters, there may be a chance that ChatGPT may not understand the case in its totality. Hence the response may be out of context in some cases.
- The leakage of personal data is one of the biggest challenges in the IT industry. A lot of personal data is shared with ChatGPT for generating the required response. There is every likelihood of this data being compromised.
- It gives answers to your queries, mostly in simple language. But the legal fraternity may not like that simple language. It is programmed to give an instant response, so, at times, it may not give you a detailed answer in purely legal language, as some lawyers may like to have.
Is the Future of Lawyers at Stake?
A very hot topic these days, about use of ChatGPT in legal matters. Everyone is concerned about the future of lawyers. Will this technology eliminate the role of lawyers, especially in legal research?
The answer is NO. Every legal case is unique. It has its specific facts and background. That’s why the involvement of humans cannot be eliminated, at least in the near future. Only a human lawyer can give specific advice, especially in complex legal cases.
He can and must use the technology to build up the legal case. So, neither technology can eliminate the role of humans nor can rule out the involvement of technology. Both have to work in collaboration with each other.
The same is true when it comes to the future of law-related software. ChatGPT has its utility, whereas this software is designed for their specific use. There’s no immediate threat to them with the vast popularity of ChatGPT
Source: myshingle.com
Conclusion
In the old days, people were always hesitant to accept and adopt new things. With time, this trend has changed. Now people always look for change. So, new technologies are getting instant acceptance and popularity. The latest chatbot technology, ChatGPT, has gained quick and wide acceptance, especially the legal research and practices.
Due to its ability to search thousands of legal documents and law books, this technology has made an immediate impact on legal research work. It has made life easy for law firms. Lawyers and law firms can use this chatbot to improve the quality of their research work and legal drafting. However, they must use it with due diligence to avoid any possible legal complications.
