less when the lawyer is an AI

Many Lawyers are turning to AI to write their writings and arguments, sometimes with quite disastrous results; from Penalties for including false quotes to trials canceled. Today we receive another piece of news that relates the legal profession to AI, but in a completely different way.

The AI ​​wins its first trial. They tell it in Guardian. An HR consultancy has won the trial in which it claimed non-payment to a client. So far everything is normal, the extraordinary thing is that the legal services have been provided by an AI law firm. An artificial intelligence prepared the case, managed the documentation and finally hired a lawyer to attend the oral hearing.

Garfield AI. It is the company that is the protagonist of this case. According to their own websiteare “the first law firm in the world authorized and regulated to provide legal services entirely through artificial intelligence.” The company is authorized by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the body that deals with regulatory matters related to solicitors in the United Kingdom, and specializes in claims of up to £10,000.

AI prepares, a human executes. As we said, the AI’s job in this case was to prepare all the prior documentation necessary for the trial. The system drafted the initial letter, prepared the statements of four witnesses and compiled the dossier for the trial that took place in Wandsworth County on May 14. However, since an AI cannot attend a trial, it is necessary for a human lawyer to attend the hearing. Dominic Li was chosen for the task and stated that the AI ​​presented the case “clearly and effectively.”

Affordable. The result of the trial was that payment of the debt, which amounted to 7,000 pounds, had to be made. The cost of the process was £400, something that paying a normal law firm would have been much more expensive. According to Philip Young, the co-founder of Garfield AI, many claims are usually not filed precisely because the expense of going to trial exceeds the amount claimed. Tools of this type can democratize access to legal advice for these types of cases.

Advocacy. The legal profession threw itself into the arms of AI long before ChatGPT was on everyone’s lips and there is plenty of news about the use of AI tools in legal processes. However, usually the stories are more along the lines of lawyers not checking the AI’s answers and they end up citing invented jurisprudence as happened in Galicia. In the Canary Islands there was also a lawyer sanctioned to cite no less than 48 false sentences.

Image | Xataka with Magnific

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