CBA Record May-June 2023

Chicago Bar Foundation Report

Are the Robot Lawyers Coming? By Bob Glaves, CBF Executive Director

ees of the legal system to heart, and understand and connect with the communities we serve. Those qualities go to the core of who we are as humans. While AI and other technology can help us be better and more efficient in those roles, they are not going to replace what good lawyers do for their clients and for access to justice more broadly. The Bar Exam is on Thin Ice Assuming you agree that we’re more than the sum of our knowl edge that AI can match, this should be the tipping point for the bar exam as we know it today. We should still evaluate lawyer competence, but in a way that better tracks what we do as lawyers and predicts our readiness to practice law. I challenge anyone to tell me that our current version of the bar exam accurately measures what makes a good lawyer by any definition. Because if that is what we really think proves basic com petency to practice, we should start making way for the androids. Experts looking at these issues have already given us a head start. For example, Jordan Furlong, a renowned legal sector ana lyst, has shared a compelling vision of an entirely new framework for defining and developing good lawyers. The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal Profession (IAALS) also has been doing good work on this subject, highlighted by their recent report, Building a Better Bar. Many good reasons were already evident for retiring the billable hour, one of the main scourges in making legal services unafford able for everyday people. Technology has been making it possible for lawyers to do better work faster. This is the real value most clients are looking for but is at odds with a pricing mechanism that rewards lawyers for sspending more time on a matter. Many lawyers have already seen the light and moved to other pricing strategies that focus on value rather than time. Another Sign that the Billable Hour Should Join the Bar Exam in History’s Dustbin

T he recent news that the artificial intelligence tool GPT-4 passed the bar exam with flying colors already is generat ing a range of reactions, from the head in the sand view that AI can never replace anything that lawyers do, to fantastical ideas of “robot lawyers” as a magic solution to access to justice. While neither of these extremes is credible or helpful, these latest AI developments should cause us to step back and ponder some important questions. What does it mean to be a lawyer? Once we consider that, how can we possibly continue to justify the bar exam as the measure of basic lawyer competency? And what does all this mean for access to justice? Good Lawyers are Not Robots I’d like to pose a question: Take a few moments to consider what makes a good lawyer, in your experience. After you do that, how much connection do you see between your definition and what is tested on the bar exam? I am going to guess it’s not much, and perhaps none at all. On a related note, how much connection do you see between your definition of a good lawyer and what the AI chatbot is doing? In my own non-expert definition, good lawyers provide good counsel and top-notch services to clients, take our roles as trust

18 May/June 2023