Introduction
The legal practice developed in a manner reflects technology transition. In the mid-1970s, legal research was still done by going to law libraries and paging through hundreds of paper records.
By the mid-2000s,legal research had been completely reshaped through a continued series of innovations initially led by companies.
The legal market is one of the largest in the world and is valued at approximately $1 trillion worldwide. At the same time, it remains non-digitalised. However the legal profession is cultured, notoriously slow to adopt new technologies, and lawyers still rely on solutions developed over the years. This could change in the next few years. Al has the potential to change how legal professionals work.
Why Lawyers are using AI Tools
Artificial Intelligence tools help lawyers in many ways. It allows them to do more work and saves them more time, perhaps taking on more clients instead of doing all the boring tedious tasks which are very time consuming. AI has been applied to many legal tasks that include legal research and contract review, and Machine Learning (ML) can be applied to other legal services like e-disclosure, case analysis, argument mining and assessment of evidence.
AI tools used in legal research in databases,document review software and chatbots that can answer legal questions. For example, ROSS Intelligence is an AI-powered legal research tool that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand natural language questions and provide relevant legal information. NLP offers a compelling solution to these challenges by leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to rapidly analyze contracts, identify key clauses, extract relevant information, and flag potential issues.
NLP processing allows the user to identify materials that are likely relevant to the search even if the materials do not contain words or phrases expressly within her list of keywords. It applies to both retrieving information (e.g., identifying the relevance of a document) or extracting information (determining the key terms from a document).
Legal research is time-consuming and requires lawyers to read and analyse large volumes of legal documents. AI-powered tools, such as LexisNexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law, can help lawyers to perform legal research more efficiently. These tools use machine learning algorithms to analyse legal documents and extract relevant information. This enables lawyers to find appropriate cases, statutes, and regulations more quickly and accurately.In addition to that, these tools can help lawyers maintain areas of expertise and develop new ones by not having to read copious amounts of materials.
AI tools are easy to use, fast, cheap and accessible which could improve productivity. Lawyers can have limits in their ability to evaluate all possible decisions and have their own biases. AI tools can help provide objective and independent predictions and insights of the likely outcome of a particular litigation strategy.
Another reason why AI tools got popular is The COVID-19 pandemic because it had significantly impacted the legal system, forcing courts and lawyers to adapt to new ways of working. Technology and AI have played a key role in this adaptation, helping to keep the legal system running and providing access to justice for those who need it.
Virtual hearings :for example have become increasingly common during the pandemic, allowing lawyers and judges to conduct hearings remotely. This has helped keep the legal system moving.
Document review :Al-powered document review tools have been used to help lawyers review large volumes of documents more quickly and efficiently in complex cases, such as those involving fraud or intellectual property.
Legal research :legal research tools have been used to help lawyers find relevant case law and statutes more quickly and easily. This has been especially helpful in cases involving new or emerging areas of law, such as those related to COVID-19.
Risks of Over Reliance
Many attorneys already use artificial intelligence in some way or form in a lot of tasks but a survey (March 2023) out of more than 1000 U.S. lawyers 80% had not yet used AI in their work, 73% had negative or mixed feelings about it and 87% had ethical concerns regarding it.⁶ There’s a lot of issues like AI hallucinations and misinformation lawyers can maximize the efficiency of these tools but must watch out for “fake”cases.
An example of a popular case is ROBERTO MATA,plaintiff against AVIANCA defendant, Inc. United States District Court for the Southern District Of New York.The Court is presented with an unprecedented circumstance. A submission filed by plaintiff’s counsel in opposition to a motion to dismiss is replete with citations to non-existent cases. When the circumstance was called to the Court’s attention By opposing counsel the Court issued Orders requiring plaintiff’s counsel to provide an affidavit annexing copies of certain judicial opinions of courts of record cited in his submission, and he has complied. Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations. Set forth below is an Order to show cause why plaintiff’s counsel ought not be sanctioned.Consistent with his discussion of the serious risks to the “integrity” of “federal judicial proceedings” posed by fake federal judicial opinions, Judge Castel also ordered the attorneys to send these materials to the judges improperly identified as having issued the bogus cases. Finally, the attorneys and their law firm had to pay a $5,000 penalty, with Judge Castel emphasizing the “gatekeeping role” attorneys must play “to ensure the accuracy of their filings.”
A close review of the bogus decisions Mr. Schwartz received from ChatGPT would have raised multiple red flags and thus provided another offramp to avoid an inaccurate submission andsanctions.The Law Society Tribunal has imposed what access-to-justice watchdog Courtready calls the “largest costs order issued by any Canadian court or tribunal to date” against a lawyer for using AI-fabricated case references.
In the matter of Mazaheri v. Law Society of Ontario, 2026 ONLSTH 112, the tribunal found that Shahryar Mazaheri, who represented himself, should “bear the full costs of his actions,” ordering costs of $31,150 to the Law Society of Ontario. Mazaheri, who had his licence suspended in November 2024, had filed motions, first to cancel or vary the interlocutory suspension and then to exclude evidence produced by the LSO.
In submitting those motions, Mazaheri used AI to prepare a factum, supplementary factum, affidavit, and supplementary affidavit without checking its output, resulting in him citing “cases that don’t exist and real cases that had nothing to do with the points the respondent was making.” The tribunal found that Mazaheri’s “irresponsible use of artificial intelligence is an additional and significantly aggravating factor when we consider his conduct in these motions.” According to Tom Macintosh Zheng, a Toronto-based lawyer and co-founder of Courtready.ca, that $31,150 figure sets the record “by far” for AI-related cost impositions.
Ethical and Professional Responsibility
Addressing the ethical and legal implications requires developing clear guidelines and standards in using AI tools in legal matters, the data privacy issue must be addressed and protection of individual rights responsibly. Transparency, fairness and accountability in algorithmic decision making and the potential for data breaches legal professionals handle a lot of sensitive and confidential information any data breaches could have severe consequences.
The use of AI solutions can pose a risk to the general duty to preserve client confidence and to maintain and preserve the attorney-client privilege.The rapid pace of technological advancement presents a challenge for existing legal frameworks.
Another factor is plagiarism and originality concerns that anything outputted by a generative AI system is by definition can not be completely original work and it must be plagiarized. There is still no single unified international law regulating artificial intelligence. The most notable international document so far is UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2021), which is non-binding but influential in shaping national policies.
The limits of AI tools in legal Reasoning and Analysis
Technology firms have worked with some success to automate the structured component of due diligence. Apogee Legal and Kira systems have developed software that crawls a company’s network to identify vendör änd sourcing contracts, customer agreements, software licenses and leases. These programs are only effective if they can be trained on a sufficient volume of similar documents. Some due diligence reviews cannot be automated because they involve searching for unexpected uhänticipated information such as a contractual relationship with a party ihat might violate a provision of law. A human mind can extract correct inferences from limited information in which human lawyers could use analogles, common sense and context to identify a problem in a contractual reference even if it was unanticipated.
Legal writing is another example: it’s very difficult to automate and the majority of its structure cannot be automated the way a baseball game can. Legal Writing requires flexibility and conceptual creativity that coinputers at this time do not exhibit. The use of precedent even though it is second nature for lawyers its extremely hard (impossible currently) for a computer to model The analysis section of a legal brief for example needs a complex interplay between law and fact in which the law that governs is determined by the facts while the relevant facts are determined by the governing law. About communication and interactions with clients most of these lawyer’s interactions with clients or otherwise require spontaneity, emotional intelligence and unstructured communication that is outside of automation currently. Legal prediction software programs address only courts and case law but lawyers daily have to predict other things, such as how an opponent might react to a settlement offer. Effective advising isn’t just predictions, it requires lawyers understanding the client’s situation, goals and interests. Lawyers must think creatively of the ways that serve the best interests of the client.
High Costs and the threat of Replacement
Small law firms and independent practitioners may not have the resources to invest in AI technology which can be expensive to implement. Another major concern with AI is the possibility of job losses. The reason for that is how a lot of routine tasks can be automated such as documents review as well as legal research that may decrease jobs available for people who do these routine tasks.
Perhaps the best example of the most fundamental change is the report referred to earlier under the Document Management heading that JP Morgan in 2017 developed and used software to do in “Seconds What Took Lawyers 360,000 Hours.” In other words, the drudge work traditionally done by starting out lawyers is already vanishing and will ultimately disappear almost entirely.
Conclusion
Future trends and developments in AI technologies have the potential to revolutionize the legal field, offering opportunities to improve efficiency, accuracy, and accessibility of legal services. However, navigating the ethical, regulatory, and practical challenges associated with the adoption of AI in law will be essential to realizing the full benefits of these technologies while upholding the integrity and principles of the legal profession. As AI technologies continue to advance and progress in various aspects of legal practice, addressing the ethical implications and Ongoing research are essential to deepen our understanding of the ethical considerations of AI in law, including important issues such as algorithmic bias, transparency, accountability, and data privacy. Moreover, sustained dialogue among legal professionals, technologists, ethicists, policymakers, and other stakeholders is necessary to develop informed solutions and guidelines that promote responsible and ethical use of AI in the legal profession.
THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY AMAL SHALABY COLLEGE FROM FACULTY OF LAW PORT SAID UNIVERSITY
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