Comment by galaxyLogic
2 days ago
I'm going to need some legal help for my startup. But I can't pay much. So I figured I will ask AI all relevant questions, as well as forms filled etc. Perhaps even create a patent-application for me.
THEN I find a human lawyer and give AI's answers to them and say "Can you find any errors in this? Can you improve it?" .
That way I think my legal bills should be smaller because the AI has already done most of the work. What do you think? Which LLM is best for legal work?
I think that within a few years, most lawyers will expect that clients will have run contracts through an LLM prior to sending them to outside counsel. Emails will be along the lines of:
Please see attached contract we received from [counterparty]. ChatGPT says blah, blah and blah should be revised. What do you think? Is there anything else that we should change?
Right. That will reduce workload for the lawyers. But will their fees then go down? I'm kinda worried that if I don't give them the LLM produced legal docs for review they will just use the LLM themselves and then charge me for the work the LLM did :-)
It's bit like with doctors, you'll want a second opinion, if you can afford it.
TBD. Probably depends on whether what you're paying for is access to their lawyer-level LLM, which they would run it through, or for actual expertise.
Probably for important deals, detailed human review will be expected.
Maybe the real value-add will be the insertion of language that LLMs won't be able to figure out, but which will be favorable for the side that inserted them.
> most lawyers will expect that clients will have run contracts through an LLM prior
and if clients won't do LLM as their last step, lawyers will do LLM as their first step ... probably both
i use codex to do initial research and draft texts (in typst). i use files-output skill so that all research contexts are rendered into files md files.
i do second phase on codex, by asking to download all pdfs and extract all text of laws it references. can repeat fully local research step.
after i ask gemini to find issues and criticize.
UPDATE: there many legal skills on github to try, not used so any yet
Are you a lawyer yourself?
You are probably going to pay about the same.
While you might find a lawyer who bills fewer hours, think about what would happen if you got a second legal opinion from another human lawyer. The second lawyer would still need to do essentially the same work. In fact, their ethics would likely require them to independently review the facts, documents, and legal issues before giving you advice.
So even if AI gives you a draft, the lawyer is not simply checking grammar or spotting obvious mistakes. They still have to verify the analysis, look for missing issues, and decide whether the work is legally sound. Could even be more expensive