A good read.
Here’s the introduction
THE HYPE CYCLE for chatbots—software that can generate convincing strings of words from a simple prompt—is in full swing. Few industries are more panicked than lawyers, who have been investing in tools to generate and process legal documents for years. After all, you might joke, what are lawyers but primitive human chatbots, generating convincing strings of words from simple prompts?
For America’s state and local courts, this joke is about to get a lot less funny, fast. Debt collection agencies are already flooding courts and ambushing ordinary people with thousands of low-quality, small-dollar cases. Courts are woefully unprepared for a future where anyone with a chatbot can become a high-volume filer, or where ordinary people might rely on chatbots for desperately-needed legal advice.
When you imagine a court, you might picture two opposing lawyers arguing before a judge, and perhaps a jury. That picture is mostly an illusion. Americans have the right to an attorney only when they’re accused of a crime—for everything else, you’re on your own. As a result, the vast majority of civil cases in state and local courts have at least one party who does not have a lawyer, often because they have no other option. And because court processes are designed for lawyers, every case with a self-represented litigant requires more resources from courts, assuming the person without a lawyer shows up at all.
Read full article
https://www.wired.com/story/generative-ai-courts-law-justice/
