ULaw’s Patrick Grant deep dives into the potential benefits and pitfalls of AI in law
“I started out as a duty solicitor, something that I really enjoyed doing,” says Patrick Grant, project director (north) of legal tech and innovation at The University of Law (ULaw). “But around ten years ago, I was given a copy of Richard Susskind’s book Tomorrow’s Lawyers, which really piqued my fascination with how we can use technology to improve access to justice and make the business of law more efficient,” he continues.
To prepare students for a rapidly evolving technological world and to future-proof their skills, Grant has designed three modules for ULaw’s LLB programme: Legal Tech, Legal Tech and Innovation, and 21st Century Legal Practice. “Just last January we had the early iterations of ChatGPT and today, we are already on ChatGPT4,” he says. My worry with this is training students on current technology which will very likely be outdated by the time they finish their studies!” Instead, Grant adopts a ‘nuts and bolts’ approach to his teaching and course design, focusing on processes.
The benefits of this are twofold, as Grant goes on to explain. “Firstly, everything we do in law is a process – whether you’re looking at a patent application, assessing criminal liability for theft or working through a conveyancing transaction. So, teaching law students process mapping, analysis and improvements is hugely beneficial to their core legal skills,” he says. Secondly, it means that students are aware of the mechanics behind how a technology works. “It’s easy to forget that there are nearly 10,000 law firms and sole practitioners in the UK, and only around 1,000 of these are likely to have the time, budget and expertise to leverage the latest AI and tech offerings. So, we have to teach every student about technology in a way that is valuable and applicable, regardless of whether they use legal tech in their day-to-day,” Grant continues.
Speaking about the current project he is working on, Grant elaborates on his involvement with digital transformation agency Calls9. “We have been developing a proof-of-concept for an AI welfare bot. This bot is integrated into a council website, for example, and allows users to type in their problems. It then provides advice by retrieving relevant information from within the website.” The goal is to develop the bot so that it can refer individuals in need to the appropriate agencies, thereby helping to bridge the access-to-justice gap and ensuring people receive quality advice when they need it. Additionally, Grant flags his involvement with LegalTech in Leeds, a project now in its third year. This initiative aims to unite the city’s legal and tech sectors through events and an annual conference, encouraging dialogue and connections among law firms, tech companies, academics and students.
Grant also offers his insights on what he sees as a common misconception among students when they think about generative AI and legal tech issues. “The biggest error is probably misunderstanding what it is. When you start out researching these topics, I’ve often found that sources don’t start with the basics — they presuppose that you already know what AI is and build on that,” he points out. As a result, people are often turned off by AI or view it as an ”electronic magic wand” with endless capabilities.
“The reality, however, is that there is a strong argument that artificial intelligence now is neither artificial nor intelligent. All it is, is a very clever application of data science. Think ChatGPT for example,” Grant says. “Yes, you’re putting in a question and getting an answer, but the basic principle is that it is a prediction engine. It doesn’t answer the question directly, but predicts what the best possible answer is, based on the data it is trained on, which I think is quite an important distinction.”
He goes on to explain that understanding these minutiae is crucial to appreciate the limits of generative AI tools, in line with the AI mantra of ‘garbage in, garbage out’. “Firstly, this means that the data we are putting into AI is vitally important to ensure the correct output. Successes like Harvey AI, which is now quite reliable, take time to develop to ensure that these are scraping the right sources to produce accurate outputs”. Secondly, Grant notes the implications of this for students wondering how they can incorporate generative AI into their application writing process. “Gen AI is an absolutely smashing tool, used in the right circumstances. But I worry about people about becoming overly reliant on it by trusting its outputs blindly and not thinking critically about how these are generated,” he cautions. “Gen AI is incredibly helpful to help you organise your thoughts, but a good job application is a reflection of who you are — so that substance has to come from you.”
Discussing how applicants can build their commercial awareness in the AI/legal tech field, Grant points to the huge range of free courses on offer from a range of reputed providers. “There’s a difference between saying you understand AI, and saying that you understand its applications in a specific way based on your learning from a course”, he says. He emphasises the importance of starting out by focusing on the basics, whether that’s through reading a book or researching online, to get a firm grasp of the core principles before anything else.
Grant also contextualises the current AI discourse within the ‘hype cycle’ that occurs with every new technology and recommends that students look into this. “It starts out with the technology trigger and everyone getting dead excited about it. That excitement continually builds up until it reaches this height called the ‘peak of inflated expectations’. Then suddenly, it shoots down into a trough of disillusionment and eventually plateaus. I’d say that we’re currently at that peak, and the important thing is to be able to work out what happens when the excitement levels out”, he explains.
Patrick Grant will be speaking at ‘AI and the law — with A&O Shearman, Macfarlanes, Osborne Clarke and ULaw’, a virtual event taking place TOMORROW. Apply now to attend.
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