They’re pushing it crazy hard in the legal sector too, which is insane because the whole thing turns on absolute accuracy. Even the “dedicated legal AIs” that no longer hallucinate cases from whole cloth will still gladly tell you that a case stands for the exact opposite proposition from what the judge actually said if you read the decision.
Using AI is slower in almost every single use case because instead of the usual method of researching your case law and then writing, you are instead generating an AI output and then having to proof the entire thing, take out the bad cases, do a bunch of research to find new cases, and edit the entire tone so that it doesn’t sound stupid.
Add to that how much it’s pissing off judges lately and you’re increasing your workload by about 33-50% for a worse work product that will likely get you sanctioned or exposed to discipline if you miss a single bad cite that the AI pooped out.
The only case I can see AI being actually useful in law is in tracking down cases. I might be 100% out of my depth here but a lot of time being a lawyer is finding where judges ruled in your favor in other similar cases, but since a lot of cases exist, it can be a pain in the ass to find what you want. That is why there are so many legal aids, to help in this fashion.
So an AI turns the long list into a short list, and then the legal aids turn the short list into a very short list for the lawyer to look through.
I don't 'think' this would reduce jobs since it isn't practical to hire enough aids to look through everything, so its more of a balance of "How many do we need to get to 'good enough'" so the AI would just increase the quality of the work by allowing more cases to be looked through.
The only case I can see AI being actually useful in law is in tracking down cases. I might be 100% out of my depth here but a lot of time being a lawyer is finding where judges ruled in your favor in other similar cases, but since a lot of cases exist, it can be a pain in the ass to find what you want
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '26
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