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AI 'can be confidently wrong', lawyers warned

A webinar on the impact of AI on human connection in the legal sector has heard that tools linked to the technology have spurred a “creative revolution” among lawyers. 

The comment came from Paula Fearon (partner and head of project services at McCann FitzGerald LLP), one of the speakers at an event (30 April) hosted by Law Society Psychological Services in collaboration with Law Society Professional Training. 

The discussion, led by Dale Whelehan (Law Society Psychological Services), centred on the emotional costs of replacing face-to-face connections with AI, and how to keep legal work human-focused. 

More time 

Sarah Irwin (entrepreneur and former SaaS general counsel at Irish tech unicorn Tines) told the webinar that, in the in-house sector, AI was freeing up lawyers’ time by automating low-value work such as standard contracts. 

This was the sort of work, she said, that could overwhelm lawyers and lead to burn-out. 

Irwin observed that the use of AI for such tasks was giving lawyers more time to invest in human connection with other colleagues, and “humanising” the work that in-house lawyers did.  

“In-house lawyers are becoming business enablers and stronger business partners,” she stated, and were no longer just seen as a “department of ‘no’”. 

Enhanced collaboration 

Fearon told the event that AI was enabling lawyers to find “new and interesting ways of solving issues”.  

Lawyers, she said, were stepping back from the ‘coalface’ of their work and asking how the new tools could be used to streamline and enhance it.  

Fearon told the webinar of her experience in a series of workshops on the Harvey AI tool with a cohort of trainees.  

She said that while all participants brought “healthy scepticism” to the exercise, the overall lesson was that generative AI was not a blocker to learning or collaboration, but an enhancement.  

“It’s starting conversations; people are sharing their work more, because they are finding new ways of doing things,” she stated.  

Fearon told the event that she did not see technology and human interaction as two separate things, and that her firm had “embedded the technology with the people” and ensured that nobody viewed AI as a replacement for humans or human interactions.  

“As lawyers, everything we do is based on relationships,” she stated.  

AI’s ‘assertive tone'

Padraic Rowley (principal product manager at AI-powered customer-services platform Genesys) outlined some of the risks of AI use in the legal sector, telling participants that the technology “can be wrong quite confidently”, and was programmed to speak in an assertive tone. 

“To a junior person, it’s an authoritative opinion that may be wrong,” he said.  

Rowley also warned against overuse of AI in training younger lawyers.  

“The process is the learning sometimes,” he stated, adding that giving answers too easily could defeat the point of the exercise.  

The biggest risk, he warned, was the potential effect of AI on the development of some key skills. 

Rowley said that management teams needed to identify what skills lawyers needed to hone through practice, citing soft skills such as dealing with clients or working with difficult co-workers.