AI rules
I continue to be amazed at what Grok can do. I think I posted some months back about the neighbor's child custody case that I've been drawn into. I'm trying to keep costs down by helping the family lawyer with whatever parts I'm competent to do, not knowing any family law to speak of and having no experience at all in state court.
To my amazement, you can ask Grok what to do when the opposing party fails to respond timely to a motion to transfer the San Antonion case to the my county, where the child lives, then belatedly asks the San Antonion court to reconsider the uncontested order transferring the case after the transfer is complete, even if there really was something wrong with the original motion (filed after a statutory deadline by now-former counsel; I hired my neighbor a new one). That's not a easy issue to research from scratch on-line without any experience in family court, but it didn't bother Grok at all. It spit out a very serviceable motion to dismiss and brief after only a bit of back and forth. When the family court in San Antonio granted the motion to reconsider despite its clear loss of jurisdiction even to hear it, Grok can convert the brief to a petition for a writ of mandamus in a heartbeat. Now, I read all the statutes and cases and ran the whole thing by the family lawyer to be sure Grok wasn't taking me for a ride, but honestly, it was good work. I'd have been happy to get it from a talented young associate after a week of work.
Last night I asked what to do when I needed a business-record affidavit from a doctor, but his office didn't want to bother with notarizing the affidavit. Grok instantly laid out 3-4 things that get past the obstacle, including using an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury instead of one signed on oath and witnessed by a notary. (I'm terrible with business records, since in my practice we stipulated admissibility of documents 100% of the time, or the bankruptcy courts would have had our heads on spikes for wasting time and money.) Alternatively, there are subpoenas duces tecum or depositions on written questions that get around the roadblock and yield admissible documentary evidence without the need to bring a custodian of records into the courthouse for live testimony, but also without thoroughly irritating potentially helpful medical staff by making them show up for a deposition.
Then I asked, OK, how about the body-cam video that the county doesn't want to produce under the Public Information Act (a/k/a state version of FOIA), citing a privilege because the video relates to an ongoing criminal DUI case, and another privilege because the video might affect the privacy of a minor? Instantly Grok said, skip arguing with the county and the state AG's office, just go to the family judge and ask him to compel production, because he can override a privilege in the best interests of the child, and he's used to it as a routine matter.It's like having a mentor who can set you off the right direction, and he doesn't even make you go look up the statutes, he has the citations right there, and will draft cover letters and motions to compel and whatever you need. Could I ever have made good use of this tool way back when! It beats Westlaw research by a mile. And it's scot-free. I'm probably helping bring the grid down, but hey. I just want this 13-year-old to live with her sane grandma.
Excellent!
ReplyDeleteSince the Universities are DEI factories and the Law Schools stopped teaching Natural Law long ago this is good news for everyday Americans....Cut out the attorneys!.. Let them choke on their degrees!
Couldnt happen to a more deserving bunch of self appointed experts!
Schadenfreude!
Pretty cool. Do you worry about Grok just making stuff up, though?
ReplyDeleteAI hallucination can be a problem.
- Tom
That's why I read the cases and the statutes to see if they really say those things, and run it by an experienced family lawyer. ChatBot used to make things up, but I've never had a single problem with Grok. I double check by asking about areas I know well.
DeleteYeah, checking is key. It seems it's well worth the time checking. I had wondered if someone would end up spending more time checking than was saved.
DeleteInteresting that you haven't had a problem with Grok.
- Tom
The time needed to check the citations is a tiny, tiny fraction of the time it would have taken me to sift through all the potential leads and pull out 4-5 perfectly on-point cases and associated statutes.
DeleteThis is a SWAG from an AI-doubting amateur but it seems to me that most of the hallucination trouble in AI may be caused by asking it to perform too much projective reasoning. If you are providing the majority of the facts and asking it to perform a 'fill in the blank ' document production or locate specific references to a key word I don't think you have much issue with it making stuff up. The instances I've read about sound more like asking it to generate a logical outcome but with very little factual input, such as producing a brief or motion with a specific ruling in mind and then find cases that support that desired opinion
DeleteI have also had good luck using AI to assist me in writing legal documents like contracts. I'm not at all a lawyer, but it's produced several that were declared clean on legal review or that only needed minimal changes. Not in so good a cause, though; only for business.
ReplyDeleteThey say you can enter the text of a proposed contract, too, and ask Grok to identify problems. I haven't tried it yet.
DeleteAs Tom noted implied above, you do need to personally check (or have your paralegal personally check, if you still have one of those) the citations the AI claims to have produced.
ReplyDeleteMore and more lawyers are getting burned by taking AI-generated briefs at face value only to learn--from the presiding judge--that many of the citations don't exist; the AI made them up.
Who knew that AIs could be as lazy as the lawyers resorting to them without questioning....
It's not just in the law, either. I had a "discussion" a few weeks ago with ChatGPT about climate. At every exchange, I had to correct the AI on its alleged facts; each time, it would answer with words to the effect of "Yes, you're right, sorry about that, here's my corrected input."
It reached the point where I began correcting ChatGPT with my own made-up data. Its responses continued to be "Yes, you're right, sorry about that, here's my corrected input."
Eric Hines
"Now, I read all the statutes and cases and ran the whole thing by the family lawyer to be sure Grok wasn't taking me for a ride"--Obviously I would take it face value without double-checking. But I'd do that if an associate had helped me, too, not because I thought they'd lie, but because I learned long ago that many so-called researchers have no idea how to cite a case for what it really says in a way that won't embarrass me with the court. Again, I wouldn't believe a word out of ChatBot, but I've never had a problem with Grok, or at least not after cross-checking in various ways and challenging it to back up its reasoning and authorities.
DeleteLike a superintelligent dog that wants to please you.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteBut it's really not. I've had decades of experience asking paralegals and bright young associates perform exactly these kinds of tasks to help me. They spent much more time and came back with often much less thoughtful, efficient, workable product. Nor does Grok fail to note possible counterarguments. A good tool is to get a brief, then ask for a response that just tears up the original brief, then a reply that tears up the response. The result highlights counterarguments I can expect to see from opposing counsel, presented in a convincing form. The AI doesn't appear to be pulling any punches, just making the best case possible from the facts and the state of the law, exactly as I would do. And it feels like work I'd expect from a bright, talented lawyer, not hack work in the slightest. A year or two ago, I'd never have believed it. I can't imagine how a large language program can reason this effectively.
DeleteYeah, Tex, I must have read where you wrote "Now, I read all the statutes and cases and ran the whole thing by the family lawyer to be sure Grok wasn't taking me for a ride," but three paragraphs later didn't remember that bit. Sorry for making you copy and paste yourself!
ReplyDelete- Tom
I've only used Grok once that I can recall; I'll have to give it another try later.
ReplyDeleteThey've gotten better amazingly fast.
DeleteI find Grok very useful. One use case is if you're trying to fix a problem with something...phone, appliance, whatever...it is often easier to ask grok how to solve the problem than it is to search for help on the manufacturer's site
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting to me as I've come to believe that human lawyers and legislators don't write law very well anymore- Very often when I'm dealing with code, I'll come across a paragraph that I could interpret three or four different ways. I'm often looking for Planning memorandums that make official interpretations to get clarity. That's terrible also because it empowers the unelected bureaucrats to make interpretations that are more cumbersome and further from what I perceive the intent of the law is, but none of my clients are so well funded that they would sue the city over something like a bad interpretation, you just work around it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should be using Grok to identify poorly written statutes that are too vague or even contradict other code sections and start making the law better rather than simply more volumnious.
Well, thank you for getting me started on this. I may have found a way to make an argument for a client that I couldn't have by myself, otherwise. There's an overlay zone in Los Angeles called the Mulholland Parkway Scenic Overlay Zone, and it's borders are drawn as a distance offset from the Mulholland Drive right of way. As a result, unlike typical zoning boundaries, the boundary may run through a portion of a lot, making the lot not wholly within the overlay zone. The Planning department has naturally told me that if any part of a lot is in the overlay zone, it has jurisdiction. This struck me wrong as to me the plain language of within means entirely within. With one question, and one question focusing in a part of Groks original answer, I'm already seeing a path to making the argument convincingly. I may actually try it. You have no idea how much I would love to win one with the Planning Department for a change instead of just having to comply with whatever stupidity they tell you.
DeleteI conducted an interesting experiment with Perplexity earlier this year. The English actress Fanny Kemble (1809-1893) was a brilliant diarist. I asked Perplexity to assume that she was somehow transported to NYC in the current year and to continue her diaries there
ReplyDeletehttps://chicagoboyz.net/archives/72926.html