Article

Paralegals Worry: Will We Lose Our Jobs to Artificial Intelligence?

July 19, 2023

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

ChatGPT, by far the artificial intelligence (AI) most used by lawyers and paralegals at this juncture, does not like to talk about AI taking peoples’ jobs. It’s like pulling teeth just to get it to talk about the possibility. If you bear down hard enough, you’ll get mealy mouth language like “The impact of AI on the legal profession is a topic of ongoing discussion.” Push harder and it will admit that AI has the potential to automate some tasks traditionally performed by the 350,000 paralegals and legal assistants in the U.S.

Paralegals conduct legal research, draft documents, do contract analysis and perform administrative tasks. AI can handle such tasks., faster and (in general) more accurately.

ChatGPT loves the word “nuanced” – we’ve seen many references to the “nuanced” tasks of lawyers and paralegals when we ask if they can be replaced by AI. We have concluded that part of ChatGPT’s training includes soft-pedaling any discussion of taking away jobs.

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