Recently, two friends reached out to me to review letters they had recently sent out to their respective landlords pertaining to issues with the return of their security deposits. Both letters were well written, concise, and cited to relevant statutory authority. As neither of these individuals were attorneys, and one was a non-native English speaker and still taking classes to improve her English, I questioned the origin of these finely written “legal sounding” letters. While it did not come as a complete surprise, I was told by both—without hesitation and with a bit of pride—that both letters were generated by generative artificial intelligence—one via ChatGPT and the other through a legal AI chatbot one had access to through her job.
While I was impressed at their initiative and the product that was created, what troubled me was that they had come to me after the fact, whereas in the past they would have consulted me on a legal matter before acting. They were so confident in the AI product that my advice was relegated to simply a post-act “pat on the back.” Which led me to this thought, as more and more nonattorneys begin to turn to artificial intelligence for legal advice and legal document drafting, more and more attorneys will have to face pro se litigants armed with artificial intelligence.
