AI for legal advice? Proceed with caution, experts say

Platforms like ChatGPT and Claude have made artificial intelligence increasingly accessible, offering users a place to ask anything, whether how to make a cheesecake or, say, how to arrange the perfect date.

When it comes to legal advice, lawyers say people also are using AI to sort through a problem before talking to an attorney. The national law firm Cordell & Cordell found in a small survey of half of its family law attorneys that 80% said they had received AI-generated correspondence or draft documents from their clients.

Legal experts recommend approaching this developing trend with caution. They say AI can give clients a deeper understanding of an issue or a problem, but it can’t replace attorneys and it may raise questions about data security and effectiveness.

Additionally, the technology often is only as good as the person using it, according to Frank Emmert, an AI expert and professor of law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

“We have a saying by now about AI models: ‘Garbage in, garbage out,’” Emmert said. “The prompting has to be sophisticated.”

How the tools work

Most free AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, are straightforward: Users simply type in a question or prompt, and the chatbot responds with an answer. It pulls information gathered from the internet or from other users.

Advanced versions of the platforms and those serving specialized areas like the law often require fees but provide more benefits to the user, such as better-researched prompt responses and access to additional features.

Some people see AI as a way to improve their understanding of legal challenges. According to a survey last December by the investigative platform Rev, 43% of 1,002 American respondents said they’re comfortable asking AI to answer their questions about certain legal terms. Others use the technology to research general legal rights, or to collect information before speaking with a lawyer.

AI also is readily available to users who need immediate help. The Rev survey pointed to speed and accessibility as key reasons users pursue AI’s assistance.

The trend in Indiana

Some entrepreneurs are investing in opportunities to help everyday people understand basic legal concepts and organize the horde of documents and filings that can come with litigation.

William Smith created South Bend-founded Milieu Legal to help customers get answers to their legal questions and build a better understanding of the legal landscape before filing a lawsuit or contacting an attorney. While the base-level application is free, users can purchase elevated levels of the platform to ask more questions and get more detailed responses.

Smith said that after struggling to research his own legal problem, he wanted to build something that addresses those same issues for others. He built Milieu Legal to be used online or as a phone app with features that allow users to ask questions about legal issues, organize paperwork and collect their thoughts as an initial step.

Say, for example, that a landlord is withholding a tenant’s security deposit, claiming the entire deposit must be used for repairs after the tenant moves out. Milieu Legal is designed to help the tenant compile information, such as move-out photos, a copy of the lease and the landlord’s notice, to clarify what could be missing from the landlord’s argument and how the tenant can respond, according to a demonstration of the app provided to The Indiana Lawyer.

Should a situation need to be escalated, the user has a baseline argument to present to a licensed attorney, Smith said.

“Whether it’s just [needing] some clarity on handling a contract dispute with a neighbor or anything, it’s able to handle every aspect and kind of organize those and search all the available data and put that into perspective,” Smith said.

Alhough Milieu Legal can provide legal guidance, it still requires independent verification from an attorney, Smith said.

Carmel entrepreneur Mike Estridge built the Parency platform to make divorce and child custody issues easier for attorneys, clients and the court system. His technology is dual-sided: the ParencyLegal app supports family law attorneys, while the Parency app will be client-facing, helping divorced parents stay organized.

Parency is currently available as a website but will soon be introduced as a phone app with different levels of pricing depending on users’ needs. The software does tasks such as helping to keep calendars organized. It also uses AI tone monitoring to keep conversations civil, Estridge said.

“Those are things that, they sound little, but they add up to be big things when you’re going through a very highly emotionally charged process,” he said.

Parency and ParencyLegal were also born out of Estridge’s own experience with legal proceedings.

Both Parency and Milieu Legal operate on “closed systems,” meaning the AI is not trained on client data. For Milieu, information is only used if the client gives permission for the bot to use it, Smith said.

Risk and reward

Attorneys who work with AI understand why those outside of the legal profession would seek its help in legal matters, which can be confusing and overwhelming.

Those same attorneys, like Sara Kubik, see the nuances in the technology. While AI is new and exciting, it’s a tool, not an attorney, Kubik said.

Kubik, a solo practitioner in northwest Indiana, always assumes clients use AI before they meet with her. In fact, she encourages them to do that. She uses AI in her own legal practice and trains legal and other professionals to do the same.

She wants clients to use AI in part because she understands how frustrating it can be for someone to not get an answer to their problem. As a solo practitioner who deals in estate planning and elder law, she knows it can be difficult to find attorneys who work in small firms.

“The worst thing is to make phone call after phone call after phone call and not hear anything from anybody,” she said.

While AI is not the be-all and end-all for legal advice, it can be a helpful first step for someone searching for clarity in a legal matter, she said. At the very least, AI can help that person understand what legal challenges they’re encountering and what questions and concerns they should bring to a licensed attorney.

AI can also help organize paperwork, so when it’s time to pursue a matter, clients have a clearer understanding of what they’re looking at. Overall, AI can help make the legal process run more smoothly, Kubik said.

“There’s so many times where I’m talking to someone about estate planning, and they don’t have all their financials figured out. They don’t even know what a decedent had,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Well, you need to know before we can even start talking about how to probate something.’ That’s all prep work.”

What Kubik doesn’t want is for clients to present the answers they got from AI as a definite legal solution.

In her experience, AI doesn’t always give users the correct answer, so it shouldn’t be presented as fact. But it can get clients and attorneys thinking about the matter at hand.

Despite AI’s rapid advancement, some people still hesitate to trust the technology with their sensitive information. According to the Rev survey, only 28% of respondents said they’re “very comfortable” sharing sensitive legal information with AI. The remaining 72% range from only somewhat to not at all comfortable sharing the information.

Public AI chatbots are not privy to privacy, according to the Cordell & Cordell survey, which found that at least one federal court judge held that conversations with public chatbots might not be protected by attorney-client privilege. According to the judge, AI systems can be considered third parties in some situations.

Some people don’t understand the risks involved in using AI, Emmert said. While advanced versions of AI, particularly those that require a fee to use, protect user information from AI model training, free versions usually do not. That means it’s important for users to tread cautiously when asking questions specific to their situation.

“If people use the free version, they ask fairly generic questions, they get fairly generic answers that may be sort of borderline incorrect,” he said. “Is it worth it?

“Probably, but then they would really have to follow up and be more careful.”

For all that AI can do, it cannot replace human attorneys, who have the experience and conviction toward client matters that AI can’t match, Kubik said. At this stage, AI is only a text predictor, building its knowledge off what humans feed it.

“With clients, we need to keep drumming into their heads, ‘It’s not a lawyer,’” Kubik said. “Use it for the beginning. Even if it gives you something wrong, at least you’re thinking about your case, and then you do have to connect with that human expert at the end.”•