ACM

Communications of the ACM

Home/Magazine Archive/January 2024 (Vol. 67, No. 1)/Why Are Lawyers Afraid of AI?/Abstract

News

Why Are Lawyers Afraid of AI?

By Gregory Goth
Communications of the ACM, January 2024, Vol. 67 No. 1, Pages 14-16
10.1145/3631935
Comments

View as: Print Mobile App ACM Digital Library In the Digital Edition Share:

screenshot of Casetext's CoCounsel AI legal assistant — Credit: Tada Images / Shutterstock

Andrew Perlman, Dean of the Suffolk University School of Law in Boston, is no stranger to examining innovative legal technology, but his recent experiment with generative artificial intelligence (AI)—Open AI's ChatGPT, to be precise—led him to think the technology may create bigger changes to the way law is practiced than the Internet itself.

Perlman published one of the legal community's first evaluations of ChatGPT's capabilities in creating convincing arguments and answers to typical questions, in "The Implications of ChatGPT For Legal Services and Society" (https://bit.ly/3NuhFxG), a paper submitted to the Social Science Research Network (SSRN; www.ssrn.com). It would be inaccurate to say Perlman wrote the paper entirely by himself, however; as he stated in its preface, most of its 24 pages were generated in about an hour through prompts to ChatGPT. Only the abstract, preface, outline headers, epilog, and the prompts for the platform were written by a person.

No entries found

Log in to Read the Full Article

Sign In

Sign in using your ACM Web Account username and password to access premium content if you are an ACM member, Communications subscriber or Digital Library subscriber.

Need Access?

Please select one of the options below for access to premium content and features.

Create a Web Account

If you are already an ACM member, Communications subscriber, or Digital Library subscriber, please set up a web account to access premium content on this site.

Join the ACM

Become a member to take full advantage of ACM's outstanding computing information resources, networking opportunities, and other benefits.

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM Magazine

Get full access to 50+ years of CACM content and receive the print version of the magazine monthly.

Purchase the Article

Non-members can purchase this article or a copy of the magazine in which it appears.