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Comment by LordAtlas | Hacker News Reader

> For instance, an attorney may prompt the tool to review a draft divorce agreement

If this is happening, your attorney is an incompetent nincompoop.

The same would be true for developers asking the LLM to refactor or transpile a piece of code. While I agree that it takes a certain level of naivity to happily paste code into it without considering what that means for copyright you may not even own personally, there's a ton of articles by developers doing just that. Some even seem to fear they will become obsolete if they don't.

Maybe today.

In five or ten years, refusing to use LLMs for this sort of work is likely going to be pretty analogous to refusing to use a computer, and typing up all your documents on a typewriter.

We will see. This could easily become like the claim that we're five years away from self-driving cars. The reason we're always five years away is because the models sometimes make huge errors in corner cases. I have no doubt that LLMs will see widespread use but for applications like litigation? What kind of catastrophic mistakes might a junior lawyer make if they lean on it too heavily? Absolutely not as simple of a shift as giving up your typewriter.

> What kind of catastrophic mistakes might a junior lawyer make if they lean on it too heavily?

The same ones software developers are already making when they lean too heavily on StackOverflow, more recently Copilot and arguably less ambitious "smart" code completion features in IDEs as well?

Yes, average developer's mistake is probably less costly than average lawyer's, but I'm pretty sure developers of some life-critical and most money-critical software are heavily using those technologies as well. Protecting production from bullshit should be done by code reviews and QA, not bans on code generation technology.

We have self driving cars in SF, though.

Yeah, and you can use an LLM for your debate club. No attorney worth their salt is going to rely on an LLM for any litigation. Let alone the fact that they if they did, they would and should be disbarred.

It's just another tool. Mindlessly relying on any tool is obviously going to be the downfall of any professional, but refusing to use tools that could easily 5x your productivity is even more ridiculous.

I'm a litigator, as it stands now I'd waste more time explaining to an LLM what I'd need than what I'd ever get the benefit of it doing for me. Tons of automation exists in the legal industry (you should see what doing research looked like 20 years ago). I just don't think LLMs are a solution to every problem and the people that insist to me that it will make my life more productive have no idea I actually do it seems.

>Mindlessly relying on any tool is obviously going to be the downfall of any profession

Tell that to the guy offering chatGPT-based contract interpretation. It did a really bad job. I told them, but they didn't seem to listen. Maybe you'll have better luck!

> Mindlessly relying on any tool is obviously going to be the downfall of any professional

Also, are you aware you offered this in response to me responding to a post about how self driving cars already exist in SF? I think you are making your own hypo that isn't what is being discussed here, which is when these tools are being used in lieu of the actual professionals (exactly what the self driving car argument nets) .

I suspect LLMs will start out as a part of legal services at scale - i.e. LegalZoom. In short, in places where there is some notional need for a legal service but liability and budgets are low. I'm sure there is some niche similar to boilerplate contracts where a LLM will have its place.

Example: a specialized LLM plus a structured input form where a solopreneur describes the kind of NDA he wants.

Why not? The competition at this level is "Google for a free MS Word template." But I bet plenty of people would pay a hundred bucks for an "AI powered contract generator" instead.

This stuff doesn't compete with a real lawyer and doesn't replace one (though we'll see what happens in a generation or two maybe). But plenty of people are using "legal services" today where real lawyers are barely involved.

Well, that'd be the illegal practice of law: to draw up a contract for someone based upon their specific inputs and requests. That's actually a big difference from a boilerplate contract that you buy at a store.

>Why not? The competition at this level is "Google for a free MS Word template." But I bet plenty of people would pay a hundred bucks for an "AI powered contract generator" instead.

Because these aren't templates. This is the practice of law. There would have to be significant legal requirements for a company offering such a service. They'd have to not be able to disclaim their liability (which all the ones I've seen so far do). otherwise, it's just pointless. the company itself would have to be capable of being "disbarred" and in such a way that they couldn't just trivially reform. Those are two things that come to me foremost, but there are probably more.

Excellent point I hadn't considered!

The term you're looking for is deep context. These general LLMs are a long ways away from being good at many layers of context like specialized litigation, internal research papers, basically anything you wouldn't be able to expect a layman to immediately follow along.

The rise of specialized LLMs has already been happening, there's just minimal if not contrary incentive for public release.

I don't think deep is the word. It doesn't have shallow context. Calling it "specialized litigation" misses the ball. I don't think it could properly handle a slip & fall without needing to spend an inordinate amount of time getting the LLM there. I.e. doing the work myself but for the LLM? I don't think people realize that at a certain point, it's just not cost effective. There is no other way to provide the full background details to the LLM, than basically spend the effort that is otherwise the same as drafting into a template. full stop. reminder, this is for a slip & fall, not a patent litigation for example.

>The rise of specialized LLMs has already been happening, there's just minimal if not contrary incentive for public release.

I'm skeptical of their utility. They might have a better understanding and use of the specialized terms for the legal field, but how is it going to know all the background details for a case without me telling it to the LLM?

> you wouldn't be able to expect a layman

I think a layperson could follow along with much of what is filed in a litigation, especially something like a slip&fall. it's your assumption that the context comes entirely from the words chosen. It goes the other way, the attorneys from both sides choose the words based upon the context. You need to understand the full context, especially what isn't mentioned in the papers to adequately function as an atty. The notion that you just need to read enough and then have a specialized understanding of the words is misguided.

The utility is doing a majority of the work and you do adlib, not 100% and outright replacing the legal profession. That would require good AGI.

Anyone using the current general LLMs to replace 100% of their work is very short sighted.

But it cannot do the majority of the work that I do, which is what I intended to explain. I'm not even sure what conveniences AI would offer that a template doesn't.

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