Fabiola Rio / The Mossy Log
Although the origins of artificial intelligence (AI) date back to the 1950s, recent technological developments have solidified its role in today’s world. While the definitions and boundaries of AI are in constant flux and are hotly debated, the University of Illinois, Chicago defines AI as a branch of computer science that enables machines “to learn from experience, adapt to new inputs, and execute tasks resembling human capabilities.” Science fiction, for decades, has put forth fictional AI entities or characters such as Agent Smith in The Matrix, robots in WALL-E or Skynet in The Terminator, while recognizable, present-day examples of AI range from Amazon’s Alexa, to Apple’s Siri, to Tesla’s self-driving vehicles, to generative bots such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November of 2022, a free, generative AI chatbot software, has made AI more accessible than ever before. Although Google has been using forms of AI since 2015, in recent months, Google search engine results have been preceded by AI-generated overviews — which, according to the company, is intended to “take more of the legwork out of searching.”
Students, teachers and professionals alike are increasingly turning to AI to make their lives easier — to speed up research, scour the internet, create content and proofread documents.
Because this ubiquity of AI is both relatively recent and constantly changing, companies, institutions and governmental bodies are hesitant to enact policies regulating its use. It is generally agreed upon that its ever-increasing prevalence necessitates regulation and raises numerous ethical dilemmas, but there is currently very little legislation addressing AI use in professional and educational fields.
In the same way that student protests this past year have prompted a wave of institutional discussions, responses and updates to protest policies, pervasive AI use has created a sense of urgency for educational institutions to establish legal and ethical precedents for AI use going forward.
For example, individual professors develop curricula and guidelines that address (what they deem) appropriate AI use in the classroom — sometimes this involves disclosing AI use in an annotated bibliography, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of AI as a class or prohibiting it altogether.
Another example is The Mossy Log’s Code of Ethics, which was updated this past year to include a clause stating that “Artificial Intelligence cannot be used under any circumstances, for either articles or visuals,” and that “Staff members who plagiarize, misrepresent facts or fabricate stories are subject to punishment or termination.”
On a larger scale, corporations and governmental institutions are developing blueprints for AI Bills of Rights, which protect them from liability and address a number of AI-related issues, including algorithmic discrimination, data privacy and human alternatives.
While AI legislation refers to any and all legislation related to AI use, it is not to be mistaken with AI use in the field of law, which is a much more unique matter.
As with many other professional fields, larger-scale and corporate law firms were the first to adopt AI use in their practice because they had more money, resources and technology. This included large national and multinational law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP or DLA Piper, with thousands of employees. With the introduction of more accessible, specialized AI platforms (beyond ChatGPT) such as CaseText, Lex Machina, Harvey and Lawgeex, smaller law firms have begun to take advantage of the generative tools that are now available to them for little to no cost. These platforms search for, organize and interpret information that would often take hours, if not days of research, for a human to do — time that is very precious to small business owners and employees.
Legal practice is no joke — it is easy to understand why an overwhelmed attorney might turn to technology that can reduce dozens of hours writing briefs, scouring through case documents and analyzing contracts to mere minutes. For a small business owner, that can free up substantial time to put towards networking, client retention, business development and other tasks that are often set aside in the face of tedious document analysis.
However, recent mishaps with AI-generated “hallucinations,” or AI-generated inaccuracies that present fabricated data as authentic and factual, have raised concerns about whether or not it should be used in legal practice, and if so, how to properly and ethically make use of the generative technology as an attorney.
In June of 2023, a Manhattan personal injury lawyer, Steven Schwartz, mistakenly submitted a court filing that cited six nonexistent cases after using ChatGPT for the first time. The generative AI tool pulled the cases out of thin air.
The month prior, in Colorado, a similar incident occurred, garnering national attention. Attorney Zachariah Crabill, two years fresh out of law school and overwhelmed as a rookie with a growing caseload, turned to ChatGPT to help sift through lawsuit citations for a motion. He only realized shortly before appearing in court that ChatGPT had generated several fake lawsuit citations, which resulted in the judge reporting him to the state bar, from which he was suspended, and soon after, the termination of his job.
In both cases, AI hallucinations jeopardized both the attorneys’ careers and their clients’ cases.
These are only two examples of the horror stories young lawyers are contending with a changing professional field. Nonetheless, AI use seems to have established its place in modern legal practice.
At Lewis & Clark’s Law School, professors are beginning to adapt to the ever-changing ways in which technology interacts with legal practice by adjusting curricula and incorporating appropriate, ethical AI use into the classroom.
In acknowledging the allure and appeal of AI use in legal practices, LC hopes to prepare law students with the skills they need to effectively and responsibly take advantage of AI tools in legal research.
Robert Truman, associate dean and director of the LC’s Northwestern School of Law, provided insight into his perception of AI integrating itself into the field of law and, in particular, how it plays into the education LC’s law school provides for future lawyers.
“There are, of course, the scary stories out there, but still, lawyers fall into these traps all the time — judges fall into these traps as well,” Truman said. “I think it’s very difficult for most attorneys to try and sort what is safe; ‘What am I getting back that I can rely upon?’”
He said LC’s approach to AI use is similar to many other schools — it is prohibited during exams but otherwise left to each professor to decide their courses’ policies.
Truman acknowledged that generative AI has the potential to help students with varying degrees of writing skills or language skills, in terms of equalizing the playing field. He also noted its benefits for legal clinics and nonprofits who do not have the resources that other legal organizations might have for identifying and interpreting specific language, crunching and analyzing data and finding patterns in large volumes of documents.
Truman identified legal research and legal reasoning as two essential skills that AI cannot replicate.
“It’s not good at legal reasoning, and that’s a real problem,” he said. “Lawyers don’t have to deal with the easy questions too often. They get the questions that are difficult, that aren’t clear, and it’s not as simple — so much of law is, in theory, applying the law to a particular fact.”
He touched on an idea that is becoming more widespread in professional fields in recent years.
“There’s a whole issue of, how do you know if it’s doing a good job or not? And that requires expertise,” he said. “There’s a great phrase I saw that ‘You must have lawyer intelligence to use artificial intelligence,’ the idea that an expert in a field can use generative AI and recognize the benefits and also the negatives. But if you’re new, if you’re learning to become an expert, then you don’t generally have those tools yet.”
In the upcoming spring semester, Professor Tabrez Ebrahim, who declined to interview, will be teaching the law school’s first designated course, LAW-215, on AI and Law. According to the website, the course will “provide an introduction to the term AI, how the law treats AI, and business and societal responses.”
Through guest lectures, current events, group discussions, legal scholarship, cases, statutes and regulations, students will consider what AI is, and “how the law shapes its development and regulation generally.”
No technical background is required, but the course description states that students must be willing to engage with the technology.
Up to this point, AI has been a point of discussion in legal research courses at LC, but has not been granted an entire semester of study in and of itself.
At an institutional level, LC is actively working to engage in conversations regarding ethical AI use, changing policies and educational practices. Annual meetings with faculty, incorporating AI into different departments’ curricula and experimenting with different generative tools are all part of the process.
On a larger scale, states are similarly preoccupied with the topic.
Earlier this year, Oregon passed two bills addressing prevalent AI use. State Senate Bill 1571, requires political campaigns to disclose the use of AI in ads and communications — the failure to do so can result in a fine of up to $10,000. House Bill 4153, on the other hand, serves to create a task force that can research and address artificial intelligence as it applies to legislation.
In the 2024 legislative session, at least 45 states introduced AI bills and 31 states adopted resolutions or enacted legislation.
Fewer states have adopted legislation that directly addresses the developing role of AI in legal practice, in the courtroom and in the daily lives of judges, attorneys and paralegals. Delaware and Georgia are among the few states that have issued interim guidance to regulate generative AI in the courtroom.
While Oregon has yet to adopt a statewide policy addressing the role of AI in the field of law, it is certainly on its lawyers’ radar. The April 2024 Issue of the Oregon Bar Bulletin explored a range of topics addressing AI in Oregon’s legal world — including an article by Melody Finnemore on how “Law Schools Navigate AI Amid Rapidly Changing Landscape,” which covers University of Oregon, Willamette University and LC.
In the field of law, which deals with the nuances and intricacies of legislation, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which AI, which has already resulted in several legal mishaps, should play a role in making sense of cases, stipulations and motions. Court rulings can have very high stakes, on both an individual and national scale. As young lawyers enter the world of law, they must prepare themselves for the profession as it exists now: in a modern world where AI use is unavoidable, increasingly prevalent and fraught with potential for dangerous, real-world implications.
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