I am currently dealing with a relatively complex legal agreement. It's about 30 pages. I have a lawyer working on it who I consider the best in the country for this domain.
I was able to pre-process the agreement, clearly understand most of the major issues, and come up with a proposed set of redlines all relatively easily. I then waited for his redlines and then responded asking questions about a handful of things he had missed.
I value a lawyer being willing to take responsibility for their edits, and he also has a lot of domain specific transactional knowledge that no LLM will have, but I easily saved 10 hours of time so far on this document.
I am a semi-retired blue collar electrician. Higher IQ, but lowly certifications (definitely not a lawyer).
Currently I have initiated a lawsuit in my US state's small claims civil court, over a relatively simple payment dispute. Without the ability to bounce legal questions/tact/procedurals off of Perplexity, I wouldn't have felt comfortable enough to represent myself in court.
Even if I were to need a lawyer on this simple case, the majority of the "leg work" has already been completed by free, non-pay LLMs.
My court date is early June; I'm both nervous and excited (for restitution)!
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I have a judge brother and have been arguing for years that law clerking is probably in its last gasps of career-entry; Chief Justice Roberts's end of 2023 SCOTUS report was a refreshing read to share among family members (which argued that LLMs will provide more accessibility to judiciary by commoners).
Personally, I already would rather have a jury of LLMs deciding most legal outcomes (albeit would need to be impartially programmed, if that's even possible). Definitely would make for better democratic accessibility.
I found Bruce Schneier's recent article "Reimagining Democracy" [1] quite an interesting thought experiment (which is about his hosting intellectuals in their discussions of creating entirely new democracies utilizing modern technologies). It'd be super fair if a trusted AI government could lead to better democracies than "modern capitalism" can / has.
This is super interesting, because I've been in similar conflicts (as a renter trying to recover security deposits in court) and been screwed over by the lawyers I've retained (like, literally not even showing up in court) and I probably could have done all this with an LLM myself. When the stakes are low, why not?
I've also had a lawyer not show up (me as criminal defendant), and then try to fleece me for more money (than initially agreed) because we (I) had to reschedule my court date — only to eventually reach a simple plea agreement which any public defender could have secured. LLMs didn't exist when this occurred, well over a decade ago.
>similar conflicts (as a renter trying to recover security deposits in court)
This is basically my current scenario. LL sold the rental I was living in, which I had pre-paid for an entire year, because the septic tank went out. We mutually agreed to end our lease... he then wrote me a check for overpayment... he then canceled the check (without even telling me). As an added bonus, he tried nothing to fix the tank... then sold the disaster to somebody else (I found out only when the new owner showed up on my/his doorstep).
Not my first time in court, but is my first time as Plaintiff. I'm very excited to (potentially) get awarded TREBLE DAMAGES on my few-thousand-dollar initial claim/dispute.
The era of "A lawyer that represents himself has a fool for his client" are rapidly approaching end, particularly within small claims civil courts. I'd love to see entire branches of government replaced with machine-learnt judges.
I've already decided that if the Defendant (in my case) chooses to appeal to our higher court (i.e. not small claims, which he is entitled to do) I will retain an attorney, only because civil procedure is so nuanced.
But I'm trying first, and most of the legwork is already formulated.
I was able to pre-process the agreement, clearly understand most of the major issues, and come up with a proposed set of redlines all relatively easily. I then waited for his redlines and then responded asking questions about a handful of things he had missed.
I value a lawyer being willing to take responsibility for their edits, and he also has a lot of domain specific transactional knowledge that no LLM will have, but I easily saved 10 hours of time so far on this document.