Introduction to First Drafts

Some attorneys–mostly younger lawyers–fear that “robo-lawyers” powered by generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) will take their job. Other attorneys–mostly older lawyers–believe that AI is best used to find the fastest way to lose your law license and get sued for malpractice. We think the truth is somewhere in between, where AI is (much) more than a joke, but falls far short of an omnipotent job-killer (or perhaps, “job-Terminator?”). AI will be what the calculator was to the accountant: a tool that vastly increased efficiency, but ultimately relied upon a human to use correctly and interpret the results appropriately.

AI Will Never Be Perfect . . .

“Wait a minute, a calculator is always correct, but AI gets things wrong!” says the skeptics. And they are right, AI gets things wrong, a phenomenon known as a “hallucination.” Sometimes, AI hallucinations defy basic common sense. The best kept secret in the AI industry: hallucinations are a fundamental flaw of AI, and we’ve known it since the beginning. Early on in development, researchers from OpenAI discovered that AI’s error rate followed a predictable trend line. By giving more data and computational power to an AI, the error rate would decrease at a certain logarithmic rate. According to the regression trend line, there is theoretically a point where AI has a zero-error rate with enough data and computational power. However, increasing data and computational power only incrementally decreases the error rate, resulting in diminishing returns. While Silicon Valley is convinced that it can invent its way out of this limitation, we side with the skeptics and are not so convinced we can achieve “perfect AI.”

. . . But It's Not Useless

But that’s not to say that AI is completely useless. AI can be used to save hours by producing a “first draft” of a document. That first draft is not perfect, and likely never will be; AI will probably forever be just a "first draft" tool. But the countless hours saved, the deadline pressure relieved, and the breathing spell given by AI is nothing to scoff at either. Organizing facts and arguments in a coherent and persuasive manner is expensive, time-consuming, and mentally-exhausting. Lawyers often get lost in the weeds of drafting, when more time and energy should be spent on refining arguments, strategizing to achieve desired outcomes, and preventing mental burnout. AI can and should a lot of the heavy lifting. After all, it’s easier to edit than to draft from a blank page.

Again, AI will never be perfect. AI will always need the experience and real-world knowledge lawyers intuitively have just by actively practicing law. We also think it’s not in the legal industry’s nature to surrender critical decision-making to an over glorified black box computer algorithm. But can it crunch the numbers and remove some tedium in our lives? Let’s find out:

We are excited to announce the launch of the world's first AI litigation drafting system! Lawyers can try our system with a free trial at www.firstdrafts.ai.