It’s time to get AI-savvy

Attorney Benjamin Leigh, R’91 and L’96, is one of the shareholders of Troxell Leigh, a small law firm in Virginia; hence, he’s also a small-business owner. He co-chairs the Virginia Bar’s artificial intelligence task force. Here, he shares advice about AI with Spiders in businesses and professions of all kinds.

1. JUMP INTO THE POOL.
AI is here. We’re in a frontier of a disruptive technology — you have to jump into the pool to start to learn how large language models work. Smaller businesses can be very experimental. 

You can sign up for a free version of a large language model like ChatGPT, Claude, or some of the other basic ones. Be careful about what you put in — nothing privileged or confidential. Then ask it to draft a letter. Ask it to come up with an idea if you’re brainstorming. You have to learn a new interaction for prompting it — how to load it with information and then ask it to refine or summarize or even critique that information.

2. THINK BEYOND DRUDGE WORK.
Can AI help you with daily tasks? Sure, but the more advanced examples are whether you can have it think of an argument or an idea that you haven’t thought of.

Maybe you load your five great ideas into the database, and you say, “Can you think of another one?” It may think of three more. Two might be off-the-wall, but one might have merit. It is still very early, but people continue to produce surprising examples.

3. GET CREATIVE WITH PROBLEM-SOLVING.
Another task force member shared a surprising example from a contentious divorce case. One spouse was very technologically gifted but also very angry. The opposing lawyers and their clients got creative. They started using AI as a filter for the former spouses to communicate with each other. They would write out what they wanted to say, and AI tempered it. The judge presiding over the case said to the lawyers, “I’ve noticed a lowering of the temperature.”

That hit me from left field. I did not see that coming. Of all areas, I thought domestic relations was safe from AI, but what a neat way of using the technology.

4. KNOW THE LIMITATIONS, BUT KEEP THEM IN PERSPECTIVE.
It is going to amaze you with things it can do, and then it will amaze you with things that the algorithms don’t get quite right. We have to exercise judgment and critical thinking. Human agency has to remain.

It’s imperfect. From an error perspective, it’s almost the same as if I have a young lawyer, and I give them something that a more senior attorney should work on. I will need to check the work and exercise oversight.

Those concepts — checking truth, accuracy, and judgment — are still important. We have seen before that technologies change how we practice. The Gutenberg Press changed how people communicated. So did the iPhone. That’s what I think is fascinating about this age. We’re in the very early stages of an interesting period.