Using AI research tools in practice without losing your judgment

Legal research tools that use artificial intelligence are changing how lawyers work. They are fast, and they are persuasive, which is precisely why you need to use them carefully.

What they do well

• Summarise a long judgment and point you to the passages that matter.
• Suggest search terms and related authorities you had not thought of.
• Produce a first draft of a routine document for you to improve.

Where they go wrong

An AI tool can state a wrong rule, or cite a case that does not exist, in the same confident tone as a correct one.

This is not a rare bug. It is how language models work. They produce plausible text. Plausible is not the same as true.

A safe routine

1. Verify every authority. Open the actual judgment or statute, and read the passage. Never cite from a summary.
2. Check the current law. An answer may rely on a provision that has since been amended or repealed.
3. Prefer tools that show sources. An answer you can trace is worth more than an answer you must trust.
4. Keep the human decision. The tool drafts, you decide.

Confidentiality

Your duty of confidentiality to clients does not stop at the keyboard. Before you paste anything into a tool, ask:

• Where does this data go, and who can read it?
• Is it used to train a model?
• Does it contain personal data, which the Data Protection Act, 2019 regulates?

Remove names and identifying details where you can, and read the provider's terms.

Be open with clients

If a tool helped to prepare work, you remain responsible for it. Many firms now adopt a short written policy: which tools are approved, what may be entered into them, and who checks the output.

The best use of AI is to give you more time for the thinking only a lawyer can do.

This article is general information about professional practice, not legal advice.

Cover photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash.