Prompting Machines and Barristers
Of legal displacement and machine instruction
Here’s today at a glance:
❓ And What Was Your Third Question?
A man walked into a lawyer’s office and inquired about the lawyer’s rates.“$250.00 for three questions”, replied the lawyer.“Isn’t that awfully steep?” asked the man.“Yes,” the lawyer replied, “and what was your third question?Hopkins Law Firm
This amazing paper from New Zealand AI startup, Onit, peers into the post-lawyer era. They tried to answer:
Do AIs outperform junior lawyers in determining and locating legal issues in contracts? Slightly, with F-scores (a balanced accuracy measure) for determining legal issues => GPT-4 (0.87) vs junior lawyers (0.86) for locating legal issues => GPT-4 (0.69) vs junior lawyers (0.67)
Do AIs review contracts faster than junior lawyers? Yes with GPT-4 (4.7 minutes) vs junior lawyers (56 minutes)
Is AI contract review cheaper than junior lawyers? Yes with GPT-4 ($0.25) vs junior lawyer…



