Comment by agentprose
2 days ago
I recent beat an actual lawyer as a pro se plaintiff in a civil suit. It was all codex and claude, using the cli agents to write the "import docx" scripts that wrote all the filings, and scripts to assemble exhibits. I don't know how long the bars will be able to hold onto their monopoly powers when confronted with LLMs that are measurably superior.
I've seen lawyers lose to non-lawyers who didn't use all that, just because the lawyers didn't do their work, thinking, no doubt, "I'm a lawyer I will just win", at any rate there is a well known aphorism that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client.
finally, was this thing you beat the actual lawyer at in their specific specialty, since lawyers are often focused on particular aspects of the law?
It was a condominium law specialized attorney representing a condominium association on a matter of condominium law.
> at any rate there is a well known aphorism that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client.
IME, many lawyers who represent others also have fools for clients.
I don't think the saying that if you're a bad lawyer, dont represent yourself, it's that their mistake is forgetting what half the point of a lawyer is: to be objective.
And that when trying to be a lawyer will usually fail when you have an emotional stake in the outcome. Even if you're the best lawyer in the world, you need someone practical and dispassionate to make sure they can see your blind spots.
Is it perhaps possible that you won your case because you didn't break the law, or conversely because the other party did break the law? Unless ChatGPT persuaded a judge to side in your favor even though you were legally in the wrong, this really doesn't tell us anything at all. (And even in that circumstance, it might speak more to the complete incompetence of the other party's legal representation.)
In my case, the defendant was indeed breaking the law, but it was a "new" law untested by case law, so it was somewhat risky how a judge would interpret it. The counsel of record for the defendant was bringing "recycled briefs" energy, possibly out of overconfidence.
It is clear by how you're talking you may not be a 'lawyer' but your exposure to building and handling your case (very cool with AI I agree) has clearly elevated your lawfare knowledge above average levels.
2 replies →
That's cool, but bear in mind that courts in the United States are generally required to be a little more lax in their enforcement of procedural rules when a party is pro se. Not saying you did make mistakes, but if you did, you may have gotten a pass.
Additionally, you haven't given any of the details of your case, so I'm going to assume you were simply in a position where the facts of your case weighed heavily in your substantive favor, and no amount of legal maneuvers by the defendant would have made a difference.
There's nothing magical about lawyers. They are mostly just boring, studious people who excelled in non-STEM academics and were good at memorization and test taking. If you have a strong case, it won't matter very much who the lawyer is on the other side.
I did make one or two procedural mistakes, including sending an email to the bailiff without copying the opposing counsel (ex parte). in another instance, the opposing counsel made a mistake of their own in following the specific judge's rules for listing working copies. I agree, the facts of the case did seem strong, but there was a matter of interpretation of the statute that could have gone against me.
> I recent beat an actual lawyer as a pro se plaintiff in a civil suit.
So? I beat actual lawyers in trials and hearings five times between 2008 and 2019. That last one was actually a team of attorney + advocate (senior bar member).
You could always "beat" them just by reading and preparing. Now, you+AI beat a lawyer. Tomorrow, do you really think that you+AI will beat lawyer+AI?
And once we stop getting well-trained lawyers (because everyone is just a meatbag accessory to an AI), whether you win or not is likely to be a coin toss.
I would expect the future to be more like me+stockfish vs kasparov+stockfish, where the centaur part is completely superfluous. it would be a reverse centaur sort of thing where a human with legal personhood has to own the machine's output. The interesting question is whether judges or the bars manage to ban real time earpieces in lawyers that tell them exactly what to say. My case worked strictly by filings without a physical appearance, and I would have been quite disadvantage if it were otherwise.
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I'm sorry that I created a new account to not doxx myself. The number of bits of entropy of court cases in the US, in which a pro se plaintiff won, and has obviously written-by-codex legal filings, is not one I would sacrifice to identify my main account.
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