I spent this week at the ABA TechShow, which is put on by the Law Practice Division of which I am current Chair. The Show was a rousing success.
Lots of hoopla about new artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, generative AI, neural networks, and large language models. Pablo Arredondo, CEO of Casetext, and I presented on the topic. Well, Pablo presented; I just tried to stay out of the way. Pablo is one of the few people who can talk about these tools in a way that even I can understand it.
His company this week announced a new AI tool called CoCounsel. According to Casetext, CoCounsel offers skills to handle both routine and sophisticated legal tasks—legal research memo drafting, deposition preparation, document review, and more.
CoCounsel and other new tools can read and write (At least in our (human) way of thinking. I know it’s not exactly what they do, but it’s what they seem to do). They can understand your questions the way we usually pose them and then respond back with intelligent answers. Want research done? Ask the program about it, and it will spit out an answer. Want some background information about something? Ask the tool, and it will provide it.
Of course, all the discussions and announcements strike fear in many lawyers and legal professionals. This fear is often borne of misunderstanding what the tools can and can’t do and concern that robots may take over what we do. There is so much information, hype, and miscommunication about these programs. It’s hard to get your arms around what these programs can and can’t do.
The natural reaction of many lawyers may be to throw up their hands and say forget it.
And the natural reaction of many
