Generative AI is transforming the way legal professionals, law school faculty, and law students conduct research and perform other tasks. General purpose GenAI tools like ChatGPt, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini are capable of drastically decreasing the time it takes to do certain tasks and have changed the way people search for information. These tools can be useful for improving workflows, brainstorming ideas, and a variety of tasks associated with legal work.
It is important to note that general purpose AI tools are not always the best for certain specialized tasks like legal research as they were not developed or trained to handle them. In recent months, many AI tools have been developed specifically for legal research and legal practice. The Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library currently offers access to a variety of GenAI legal research tools such as Westlaw CoCounsel, Lexis+ Protégé, and Bloomberg Law Answers and AI Assistant. These tools can assist you with various legal research related tasks.
There are three main functions that today's legal research AI tools can be used for:
1) Finding and Summarizing Primary and Secondary sources
Legal Research AI products provide a quick way to start your research and gather sources of law that can be used for your research projects. Most of the current AI tools provide a brief summary of the resources found as well as links to each resource cited in the generated response.
2) Document Analysis
Legal Research AI tools can also be used to analyze documents such as cases, articles, discovery and more. Certain tools allow you to upload individual documents or create a database of documents that the AI tool can summarize, analyze, or synthesize. The capabilities of each AI tool may vary depending on the task you need it to do.
3) Document Drafting
Some AI tools can also be used to help you draft legal documents such as briefs and contracts. They can also help you revise previous drafts of documents you have already created.
Remember, AI tools for legal research are not all the same. Certain products may be better suited for certain tasks. It is important to evaluate an AI tool before you use it to make sure that it is the right one for you. GenAI tools are meant to be a starting point for your research or project. The responses and information provided by these tools are not the final product. Always be sure to review and revise the content the AI tool provides.
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