Using generative AI in legal practice

Generative AI tools for lawyers

Text generation tools

This is not a comprehensive list of all the generative tools out there. For example, it notably doesn’t include Google Bard, the generator that famously caused a Google Engineer to lose his job when he declared that the AI was sentient. But it’s a list of a few different generators, that s

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the most well known large language model neural network (LLM). The free version is ChatGPT 3.5, and ChatGPT 4 costs US$20 per month for a subscription. The difference between the two is significant. For example, it has been reported that ChatGPT 3.5 passed some sections of the Uniform Bar Exam in the US, but came in the lowest 10th percentile overall. ChatGPT 4 however not only passed the exam, but came in the top 10%.

Claude

Claude is an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, PBC. Created using a technique called Constitutional AI, Claude claims to have been trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest using natural language feedback. Claude has a personality and can conduct complex conversations, but it was designed by Anthropic researchers and engineers to be an ethical and trustworthy assistant that provides truthful responses without deceiving people or causing unintended harm. Claude aims to demonstrate the potential benefits of aligned AI if it is developed responsibly and for the good of humanity.

Sage

Sage (best accessed on Poe, below) is another offering based on ChatGPT. It’s based on ChatGPT 3.5, but has a much larger set of parameters, namely 175 billion. Sage is also trained on a wider variety of text sources, including books, websites and scientific papers, whereas ChatGPT is primarily trained on social media and internet fora.

Poe

Poe isn’t so much its own generator, as an interface where you can try out a whole bunch of different generative chatbots, and even make your own. ChatGPT 3.5 and 4, Claude and Sage are all available to try from the one interface.

Prompt engineering

Prompt engineering is a new term which describes how to write the most efficient prompts for use in generative AI systems, like ChatGPT. Here are a few resources which might help you get started.

Prompt databases

These are examples of prompts which other people have created, that might help you explore (a) how to write better prompts, and (b) what sort of things you might be able to get ChatGPT and the other to do for you.

Prompts.chat

https://prompts.chat

These are a bunch of general purpose (i.e. not legal) prompts which users have submitted. They are good examples of how to write clear and concise prompts for various tasks.

Learn Prompt

https://www.learnprompt.org/chat-gpt-prompts-for-lawyers/

A range of basic prompts for various legal tasks that provide a starting point for using ChatGPT for a range of legal tasks. They are only a starting point though - don’t forget that ChatGPT is iterative!