YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
A deposition can often take half a day to write, but family practice attorney Andy Scholz of Rooney, McBride & Smith LLC only needs a few hours – creating savings in time for him and expenses for his clients.
“I named him Kyle,” Scholz quipped, referring to the custom ChatGPT program he built over the course of 2023 to assist with writing client emails, meeting outlines and legal documents.
Kyle is just one example of how technology is impacting the legal industry. Between the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence, a strong demand for legal workers in both private and public sectors, and changes to the bar exam, 2024 has the potential to be a disruptive year for the legal industry. Here’s what to expect.
Investments in technology
Some 32% of legal workers in the 2023 Litigation Support Trend Survey by JD Supra and U.S. Legal Support stated they plan to invest more in technology in 2024 – specifically, generative AI, remote depositions and digital reporting.
Despite this projected increase, local law professionals remain skeptical of the AI piece, which may be in part due to Springfield’s tendency to fall in the early majority to late majority stages of technology adopters.
“In this community, we’re not the first or the last to feel the reverberations of major trends. And that’s a good thing,” said Crista Hogan, executive director at the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association.
From Hogan’s perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic forced local law professionals to embrace tools like video conferencing for depositions – and she observes they’ve been helpful for efficiencies.
Generative AI as next phase in legal tech
As for AI, while Hogan observes Springfield-area law professionals are “all aware of the benefits of AI,” practical adoption of the technology is a harder sell.
“There are significant ethical considerations that need to be navigated to protect clients’ interests,” says Hogan.
According to the American Bar Association, key concerns surrounding generative AI are inaccurate content, privacy and security, and copyright infringement.
Cindy Bassett, director of the University of Missouri School of Law Library, encourages an open mind.
“What some late adopters may not realize is that generative AI is already included in the tools we use every day,” she said. “Predictive text – swipe right to complete the sentence – is already common in email. Tools like ChatGPT are just another evolution of that.”
Bassett and her colleagues at the university utilize an AI-assisted research platform called Lexis AI, and they’ll soon be adopting Westlaw by Thomson Reuters. Lexis AI and Westlaw draw from the same “closed universe” of primary legal resources like current statutes, cases and regulations.
Users can engage in conversational search to summarize, analyze and draft documents based on the vetted resources.
Where products like these differ from one another, however, is in their database of secondary resources.
“These are the resources that provide legal workers with guidance or explanations of the law. They differ in each system and tend to be proprietary to that system,” said Bassett.
This highlights an interesting conundrum: While inclusion of select secondary resources is a powerful marketing differentiator for tech companies, this secrecy may not offer adequate transparency to users.
It is likely that legal researchers will save time using generative AI to gather and disseminate complex information, but they will still need to use due diligence.
This rule especially applies to ChatGPT, which draws from a broader variety of resources.
While ChatGPT may not be the ideal legal research engine, attorneys find it does shine at conducting administrative tasks based on select inputs.
Scholz has been honing his custom ChatGPT program for a year, and he’s preparing to present to colleagues his observations on how to constructively use generative AI at the summertime Missouri Bar Association Family Law Conference.
“I can program it myself, feed it case information or tax codes, and generate outlines or paragraphs from that,” Scholz said, noting the efficiency savings are useful to his workload and to his clients. “In my line of law, people pay fees for how long I work. If I know and understand how to use AI, I can save my clients a lot of money.”
Need for workers
Technology’s promise of greater efficiency happens to coincide with an increased need for legal workers, especially at the local level.
“There is a shortage of lawyers across firms, but also in the public sector – in-house counsel, public defenders,” said Hogan.
In Greene County’s 31st Judicial Circuit, the shortage comes on the heels of 2023’s record-breaking turnover: 10 of 12 judicial seats changed during a 12-month period and several were retirements.
“Boomers are retiring, companies are growing, and they’re having trouble attracting legal professionals to this community. It has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t have a law school here,” Hogan said.
Nationally, the U.S. Department of Labor reports that the legal services sector in December 2023 added 4,500 jobs, the majority of which were lawyers, bringing the law industry to a preliminary record of 1.19 million jobs.
Evolutions in bar exam
Another major change upcoming in the legal industry is the implementation of the NextGen Bar Exam. Though the National Conference of Bar Examiners isn’t set to roll it out until 2026, Missouri, Maryland and Oregon will be the first states utilizing the exam.
“The NextGen Bar will be shorter and more practical than the existing bar,” said MU’s Bassett.
It will include more multiple choice questions on key doctrinal areas, including family law, and will delve more deeply into alternative dispute resolution programs, client counseling and legal research.
The technological advances, the increase in need for legal workers and the upcoming changes to the bar exam in Missouri pave the way for some of the biggest changes the legal industry has seen – potentially improving the way law practitioners, educators and government officials serve their clients and communities.
Moseley’s Discount Office Products was purchased; Side Chick opened in Branson; and the Springfield franchise store of NoBaked Cookie Dough changed ownership.
