We find that the best publicly available LLMs like GPT-4 and PaLM 2 currently perform poorly at basic text handling required of lawyers or paralegals, such as looking up the text at a line of a witness deposition or at a subsection of a contract. We introduce a benchmark to quantify this poor performance, which casts into doubt LLMs' current reliability as-is for legal practice. Finetuning for these tasks brings an older LLM to near-perfect performance on our test set and also raises performance on a related legal task. This stark result highlights the need for more domain expertise in LLM training.

The impact, Mr. Allgrove said, will be to force everyone in the profession, from paralegals to $1,000-an-hour partners, to move up the skills ladder to stay ahead of the technology. The work of humans, he said, will increasingly be to focus on developing industry expertise, exercising judgment in complex legal matters, and offering strategic guidance and building trusted relationships with clients. Technology has eliminated large numbers of jobs in recent years, and not just robots taking over factories. Personal computers, productivity software and the internet have made office work more efficient, replacing many workers. Office and administrative support occupations, including secretaries, clerks, bill collectors and office assistants, employ 1.3 million fewer workers than in 1990, according to an analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

ChatGPT is just the latest technology to fuel worries that it will wipe out the jobs of millions of workers, whether advertising copywriters, Wall Street traders, salespeople, writers of basic computer code or journalists. But while many workforce experts say the fears that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will cause unemployment to skyrocket are overblown, they point to another fear about AI: that it will widen the US's already huge income and wealth inequality by creating a new wave of billionaire tech barons at the same time that it pushes many workers out of better paid jobs. Like many revolutionary technologies before it, AI is likely to eliminate jobs. But, as has been the case in the past, experts argue, AI will likely offset much of that by spurring the creation of new jobs in addition to enhancing many existing jobs. The big question is: what sort of jobs?

In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.

In its 2018 report, Will robots really steal our jobs?, PwC suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) threatened 30% of jobs in the UK. Much of the discussion on the introduction of AI and the potential effects on the legal sector is equally negative. Legal professionals have raised concerns that developments in AI-powered technology could threaten the security of junior roles, such as paralegals and research positions, within the next decade. Impressive advances in AI technology tailored for legal work have led some lawyers to worry that their profession is in jeopardy. However, in reality the likelihood of a lawyer's replacement is relatively low compared to that of a law student or a paralegal.

Is the cheer and mirth of the work from home transition beginning to fade away because of the lack of support system you once enjoyed at the office? When could you simply ask for a file, a case note, case research, and stay on top of all the matters all day long simply by interacting with your interns, paralegals, staff, or associates? Well, it certainly would have been great if you could get an exclusive resource to help with those valuable yet mundane repetitive tasks of passing along the information to clients, generating quick templates, or imagine if someone could address all those common concerns of the clients at odd hours, so you could give your undivided attention to the important legal issues that need your expert inputs! After all, there are things the sentient beings will always be better at, whether it be advocacy or being business leaders with a legal perspective. However, artificial beings can certainly take a load of all those tasks off your shoulders that take you less than one second of thought.

As technology progresses, so does our fear of being replaced by artificial intelligence (A.I.). A.I. has already made its presence known in the legal field igniting worry about our job security. The topic of Attorneys and paralegals v. Artificial Intelligence is hitting the headlines with ever-increasing presence. Even with the new wave of A.I. pouring into the legal industry, it does not necessarily mean that paralegals will ever become obsolete. While A.I. is by some, portrayed as an enemy, it also brings something of value to the legal field.

Across age groups, U.S. employees believe that paralegals (4%), insurance underwriters (5%), and pharmacists (7%) have the best chance to survive automation; More part time employees (25%) fear that AI will take their jobs within 10 years compared to full-time workers (18%), although there is no significant difference in attitudes on the specific jobs they think are likely to disappear. Employees at the largest companies (with more than 20,000 staff) are slightly less afraid (17%) than the overall group (19%) about the effect of AI/bots on their jobs, possibly because they have already experienced its negative impact (10%), and see a more stable future. Across age groups, U.S. employees believe that paralegals (4%), insurance underwriters (5%), and pharmacists (7%) have the best chance to survive automation; More part time employees (25%) fear that AI will take their jobs within 10 years compared to full-time workers (18%), although there is no significant difference in attitudes on the specific jobs they think are likely to disappear. Employees at the largest companies (with more than 20,000 staff) are slightly less afraid (17%) than the overall group (19%) about the effect of AI/bots on their jobs, possibly because they have already experienced its negative impact (10%), and see a more stable future.

Legal Artificial Intelligence has made the news' headlines often, recently. There are chat bots, e.g., that help you appeal against a parking ticket (www.donotpay.co.uk), or give you a first advice if you are considering a divorce (divorce bot). There is software that predicts the likely outcome of court cases. IBM offers legal AI services for eDiscovery and legal research with its Watson supercomputer: Ross, as the service is called, uses Natural Language Processing, and can also be used for cognitive computing, e.g., to review contracts (www.rossintelligence.com). Then there is RPA (Robotics Process Automation) who are creating software robots for law firms.

Meticulous research, deep study of case law, and intricate argument-building--lawyers have used similar methods to ply their trade for hundreds of years. But they'd better watch out, because artificial intelligence is moving in on the field. As of 2016, there were over 1,300,000 licensed lawyers and 200,000 paralegals in the U.S. Consultancy group McKinsey estimates that 22 percent of a lawyer's job and 35 percent of a law clerk's job can be automated, which means that while humanity won't be completely overtaken, major businesses and career adjustments aren't far off (see "Is Technology About to Decimate White-Collar Work?"). "If I was the parent of a law student, I would be concerned a bit," says Todd Solomon, a partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, based in Chicago. "There are fewer opportunities for young lawyers to get trained, and that's the case outside of AI already. But if you add AI onto that, there are ways that is advancement, and there are ways it is hurting us as well."