Now that December has arrived, folks in business are starting to wrap up operations for the year and casting a glance at 2024 and what lies ahead. I find that in December, I do a lot of thinking about what worked over the last year and what can use improvement.
As I look at the coming year, I think that AI is going to start to play a bigger part in my law practice. I’m not thinking that Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey is going to start writing my briefs and deposing opposition witnesses. I think AI is actually going to find a place in my practice that will allow me to be more efficient while expanding my opportunities to grow my practice.
So I am going to spend some time this month, and probably over the week between Christmas and New Year’s, reading and understanding how to integrate some AI systems into my practice. I probably will not be alone.
One of the issues that I am already thinking about when it comes to AI is maintaining the confidentiality and anonymity of clients, business partners, and contacts. AI, as I understand it so far, is capable of taking documents fed into it and analyzing them. Once the information and documents are input into the AI tool — like ChatGPT, for example — the information is out there for anybody to access and to be used by AI.
As an attorney therefore it is vital to make sure that any information fed into the AI engine preserves the confidentiality of clients. There is plenty of software available to ensure that anonymity is secure, but that is one area where I know I will have to be vigilant about systems I put in place.
The same goes for most businesses as client privacy and trade secret confidentiality is paramount. While AI can make our jobs more efficient, we will all need to be thoughtful about how we use it.
Another issue that I have gained a bit of awareness about is that there is a large untapped market for legal services, but the models that we use to serve clients and potential clients are incapable of fitting the larger market for folks who need services.
As an example, the typical model for the provision of legal services has always been that the client pays for the lawyer’s time. But the problem with the model, and the reason why folks are hesitant to hire lawyers, is that there is never certainty about what the final cost will be and there is no guaranteed outcome.
If you call a plumber to fix a clogged sink, the plumber will come to your house, examine the problem and tell you how much it will cost. Then you can decide if you want to buy the service.
With lawyers, you tell your lawyer your problem, he tells you that it will cost you so much per hour, but he can’t guarantee that the problem will be solved when all is said and done, and he can’t tell you how many hours it will take because with everything in law, it always “depends.”
So I’ll be spending this month thinking about how to solve that problem for clients in 2024. I’m looking forward to getting to work this final month of the year.
The Law Office of Eric R. Brown 
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