We recently placed a job posting for my new Law Clerk. Welcome to the firm Kristina!
What stood out in some resumes was the use of AI to describe an Applicant’s experience.
One Applicant in particular forgot to remove the prompt:
“If you want, I can tailor these further for a specific job posting or make them more results-oriented with metrics.”
Oopsie! Well, they clearly did not get an interview.
I have also started to notice an increase in the use of AI (poorly) by self-represented litigants when responding to correspondence or drafting their pleadings.
We sent a demand letter to a debtor, who alleges our client actually owes them, and in their email response demanding payment forgot to remove [Insert Amount if you want to specify] in their response to us. They actually didn’t provide an amount they allege our client owes.
A dead giveaway of a party using AI when attending Court, is the litigant’s inability to articulate themselves they way that they did in their writing.
I recently attended a Settlement Conference where the opposing party was clearly reading from their computer and couldn’t form an actual sentence when they were asked a question they weren’t expecting. It appeared they couldn’t type a prompt fast enough to get an answer.
A growing concern are the hallucinations and fake precedents being used by self-represented litigants and legal representatives alike. Failing to confirm the citations are accurate or even exist can result in negative impacts on the Action. Not to mention, the reputational harm for a lawyer or paralegal with potential client’s loss of confidence in them and potential complaints with the Law Society of Ontario or lawsuits by clients who feel their representative was negligent if they don’t get the outcome they expect.
It’s frustrating when a litigant uses AI for their pleadings, and they don’t understand the context of the subject matter, which is sure going to cause issues when they’re on the stand and can’t rely on AI for their responses.
AI can be a great tool, but it doesn’t take away the requirement to understand what you’re presenting, and more importantly, taking the time to ensure that the output is in fact, accurate and exists!
Also, remove the prompts!