On Monday, the ABA's AI Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence released its final report, "Year 2 Report on the Impact of AI on the Practice of Law." Featuring insights from AI Task Force experts, the report outlines the current opportunities that AI presents for the legal professional, as well as the complex challenges facing the industry.
Generative AI's tendency to "hallucinate" — or produce false information — and data privacy issues dominated the report as ongoing challenges. But the report points out that these challenges are manageable because they are known, unlike unknown problems that might arise in the future.
Claudia Ray, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and an ABA AI Task Force member, raised questions about how unknown challenges could hurt the next generation of legal talent.
"Will reliance on GenAI erode junior associates' drafting and research skills, resulting in a generation of new lawyers who are simply worse at their jobs?" Ray said in the report. "Will we end up with a briefing process that is less efficient, not more, and thus more expensive, because we will have to work harder to tell fact from fiction when responding to briefs that were created using GenAI?"
The report also highlights pitfalls of generative AI in law firms, noting moving in the legal industry toward a "stratification" of firms into the "haves" who use professional-grade AI tools that are expensive and the "have-nots" who use consumer-grade tools that present privacy and confidentiality risks.
Firms may also discover that their internal data is a mess, according to the report. AI connects to a firm's document management system, which the report says will be "full of artifacts that the firm would be better off excluding … because of age or quality or obsolescence."
As more law firms adopt generative AI tools, the report said that some — at least in the short term — will struggle to get enough staff members with the correct skills and bandwidth to work with AI.
The report also warns of a balancing act in law firms of conditioning users to the limits of AI while encouraging its use.
"There could be a tendency for generative AI output to push work product toward the middle — improving work product that might be considered low quality, but also diluting work product that might be considered high quality," Matthew Braunel, a partner at Thompson Coburn LLP and an ABA AI Task Force member, said in the report.
The report also points out challenges with AI in the courts, including the emergence of deepfakes, or digitally altered evidence, which is forcing some judges to question the authenticity of AI-generated materials.
Despite the many challenges of AI in the legal profession, the report also captures some of the opportunities that AI can be used to improve access to justice, including AI as a source for pro se litigants.
As legal practitioners become more comfortable with the technology, the report predicts, AI will evolve into a "thought partner" that collaborates with lawyers to complete more complex work. This stands in stark contrast to the role of AI right now, which is primarily for mundane or repetitive tasks.
"AI is no longer an abstract concept," William R. Bay, the ABA's immediate past president, said in the report. "AI has become key to reshaping the way we practice, serve our clients, and safeguard the rule of law."
The ABA's AI Task Force, which was created in August 2023, will conclude at the end of the 2024-2025 bar year.
--Editing by Amy French.
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