Extract from Amanda O’Brien’s article “Pa. Law Firms Crack Down on ChatGPT Use in Light of Privacy Concerns, Hallucinations”
Pennsylvania firms are cracking down and regulating artificial intelligence use in the office, even as they begin to explore how generative AI tools can help maximize attorney efficiency in their day-to-day practices.
Concerns about using AI while practicing law reached a fever pitch upon the revelation that a New York lawyer used ChatGPT to write a legal brief full of fake case citations, resulting in a $5,000 sanction against the lead lawyer and his associate.
Since then, law firm leaders have been proceeding with caution, with some outright forbidding the use of ChatGPT in order to prevent a similar incident from happening in their firms.
This is the case at midsize firm Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby, where firm chair Andrew Indeck banned the use of ChatGPT in the office. The firm instituted this rule based on the risk of the AI providing inaccurate information to attorneys as well as privacy concerns.
“It’s not that we’re not fully committed to exploiting [the technology] as much as humanly possible,” Indeck explained. “The risks are just way too high.”
