THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL 78 | SEPTEMBER 2024 Law Practice Tips Takeaways From This Summer’s OBA Artificial Intelligence Conference By Jim Calloway and Julie Bays THIS SUMMER’S PROGRAM, “Artificial Intelligence: Shaping the Future of Law Practice,” was held in conjunction with the OBA Annual Meeting. It had good attendance and featured several experts who provided excellent educational content. First impressions are important. The first impression many lawyers had of generative AI tools was learning that a lawyer in New York got into a lot of trouble using ChatGPT to research and write a brief for him. This was followed by several similar reports of other lawyers having the same issues. Even though the headlines stated that these lawyers were sanctioned for using AI, a deeper look reveals that the lawyers’ conduct also involved cover-ups and false statements to the court. New York lawyer Steven Schwartz used ChatGPT to find some court opinions supporting his client’s claim that he had been unable to locate. When opposing counsel filed for sanctions, saying the cases didn’t exist, Mr. Schwartz went back to ChatGPT, which assured him the fictitious cases were valid law. He filed his response without checking another legal research service. Even more problematic was the case of Colorado lawyer Zachariah Crabill. When the judge asked him about possible inaccuracies in a brief, he blamed his legal intern. Six days after that hearing, he filed an affidavit stating he used ChatGPT to draft the brief. The lawyer’s conduct resulted in a suspension. THE MOST IMPORTANT TAKEAWAY Ben Schorr, a senior content program manager from Microsoft, discussed Microsoft AI tools, focusing on Copilot. He also provided the best advice about properly using generative AI when he said, “Never show anything generated by AI to a client or court without first carefully reviewing it.” Now that we can all appreciate that generative AI tools can sometimes hallucinate facts and provide quotations from nonexistent written court opinions, it seems like this is the most important rule. As we have noted before in this space, one transformation of our work that AI and other automation tools will likely cause is reducing the amount of drafting by lawyers and increasing the time proofreading drafts, as first drafts are created by AI, automated document assembly or a trusty intern. DON’T COMPROMISE CLIENT CONFIDENTIALITY WITH YOUR PROMPTS AI tools are voracious consumers of data. Your search queries with AI are called prompts. Some AI systems ingest your prompts and add them to their database, generating a remote possibility that they will be used again in a response to another user. Even though the risk is low, lawyers should understand how their prompts are retained and used. For example, ChatGPT will reuse prompts, but it also provides a setting where you can restrict it from reusing any of your content. Lawyers will want to turn that setting on. MICROSOFT COPILOT IS USEFUL AND FITS INTO EVERY LAWYER’S BUDGET We are fans of Copilot, as it is an affordable AI tool for the many lawyers already using Microsoft 365. Plus, it is designed to keep important information confidential because many businesses require secrecy, not just in the legal profession. A Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription is $360 per user for
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