Robot Uprising or Humanity’s Evolution into the Digital Age?

No… Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be making an appearance in this article, sorry to disappoint you guys. Instead, the main antagonist in this article is an AI Chatbot – ChatGPT. 

I am sure many of you reading this are familiar with or have come across this program, but for those who don’t, here’s a quick crash course. ChatGPT is an AI program that covers a diverse range of topics to the extent where it can assist individuals like us with questions and tasks. Designed to have access to over 300 billion words and working around 175 billion parameters – this makes it the forefront of AI technology. The flaw – its capacity is limited to answering generic questions and its data is limited to 2021. Furthermore, sources that are relied upon by ChatGPT aren’t always fact-checked and there is a tendency for the AI program to rely on human intervention for accuracy. 

So you're probably wondering how does this fall onto us right?

We all know how difficult it is writing essays or going through legislation without having to fall asleep. Well in December 2022, Law School Dean Andrew Perlman from the University of Suffolk set a brand-new record for co-writing a 14-page law article in one hour with the assistance of ChatGPT.  Top that Harvey Specter! What is even more pressing is how ChatGPT now challenges the traditional role of law graduates who are often tasked with either filing papers, contract work or legal research. AIs’ ability to process huge amounts of data including legal materials now puts the roles of paralegals, legal researchers and other junior roles under the microscope with technology now encroaching on their role. 

For law students, ChatGPT has also presented an opportunity to ease the load of their burden by either assisting them with their research for assignments or even, dare I say, completing their exams for them. In the US, ChatGPT was put to the test of the mighty Bar Exam. The program having scored 297 – was placed in the 90th percentile of test takers and passing the bar itself. When you hear about the capacity of ChatGPT, it does make you wonder as both a law student and aspiring lawyer what it means for you. One distinction that was found from this case study was that whilst ChatGPT possesses strong basic knowledge, it lacked the core skill of identifying issues within an open-ended prompt which is necessary in a law school exam.

So where to from here?

There is no denying there are many benefits to using this AI program – in fact, many law firms have stated that adopting it will help reduce costs and increase time management for their clients. By integrating ChatGPT, lawyers will have the capacity to resolve simple legal enquires and prepare preliminary drafts more effectively and efficiently. The key distinction that determines the barrier between lawyers and ChatGPT is a lawyer's ability to analyse clients’ issues critically and creatively in both an emphatic and clear manner. Unfortunately, as for current and future law students, universities have now taken action to implement safeguards that would comprise the integrity of law exams or any other exams. Whilst the future is still unknown for many law students, I want to conclude with the words of Lyria Moses, Director of UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation: “While it might prove to be a useful aid in legal research in some contexts, this supports humans in doing their work rather than replacing them… It is hard to conceive of this technology having similar reliability to graduate lawyers.”

P.S No, ChatGPT did not write this article😉