Take a moment to thank Eric Appleby, founder of Maritime Law Book, because the Canadian legal AI future announced today by Clio is only possible because Eric was sufficiently frustrated by the lack of access to New Brunswick case law in the 1960s that he decided to start a legal publishing company. No Eric, no MLB. No MLB, no Canadian case law in Clio and no next wave of Canadian legal AI.

You know the saying attributed to Nelson Mandela that begins “the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago?” Well, the tree now bearing fruit is . . . [more]

Those familiar with my writing will know that I usually write about artificial intelligence in terms of regulation, governance, and risk. This piece is a slight departure. What follows is a set of reflections for young professionals working in AI, or considering work in the field, at a moment when the pace of change, the visibility of the space, and the pressure to find one’s place in it can easily create more anxiety than clarity. I use the phrase “young professional” in a broad sense. It follows a familiar tradition in reflective writing, but I do not mean it strictly . . . [more]

In recent posts, I have been skeptical about using AI to generate certain kinds of legal writing. I’ve drawn a distinction between using AI to edit or revise a document and using it to create one from scratch.

I take the view that even if you can avoid hallucinations, using AI to create a court brief is likely to raise issues of competence. And I’m not convinced it is well suited to drafting opinion or demand letters, because it leads to writing that comes across as flat and robotic, verbose, and overly formalistic.

But there’s another view out there . . . [more]

In the midst of the ongoing concerns about hallucinations, particularly related to citations in documents filed with courts, I wonder if the particular focus on AI generated errors, and the penalties that have been imposed in response, are at least partly due to perceptions of these tools as cheating or aesthetic ideas about how “real” legal writing should happen. And I query the rationales for recent instances of judges issuing sanctions against people who have inadvertently included them. It seems that mistakes in AI generated documents are treated differently from mistakes that can and do appear in any piece of . . . [more]

Michael Geist had a lawyer on his Law Bytes podcast recently to talk about how AI is radically transforming his practice. For this long-time listener of one of the best law podcasts out there, the episode with New York lawyer Zack Shapiro was among the two or three most interesting and informative episodes I think Geist has ever done.

As someone who follows developments in legal AI closely, I found Shapiro’s insights into how to make the best use of AI outstanding. This is an episode that anyone interested in where law is headed — and concerned with not being . . . [more]

Over the past several months, I have had the opportunity to speak with leaders across a range of sectors about artificial intelligence. These conversations have taken place in boardrooms, universities, professional development seminars, and informal gatherings following presentations. The contexts vary and the industries differ, however a common pattern has begun to emerge.

The organizations I encounter are not dismissive of AI. Quite the opposite. Most are experimenting with generative tools, reviewing internal processes, or considering policy development. Many have established working groups. Some have launched pilot projects. Others are waiting for clearer regulatory direction before moving further. At first . . . [more]

What many of us in law, legal education, and other fields still want to know at this point is: what is AI really good for? What does it do reliably well and better than we could do on our own? And when we use it for those purposes, what risks do we take on?

In the early days of ChatGPT, those risks were clear. AI hallucinated authorities and generated biased output grounded in its training data. But as models have improved and we’ve learned to guard against these problems, those concerns have become more manageable.

A different and more subtle . . . [more]

Given the high value placed on research excellence by legal professionals and consultants, I am surprised that stories continue to be reported about the lack of rigour exercised in the creation of work product by these professional groups. In addition to the ongoing stories of professional sanctions placed on lawyers for including incorrect citations and other issues associated with the use of generative AI, there have been regular stories about the high values for government report contracts and the use of AI to create them. Here are some articles on a report prepared by Deloitte for the Province of Newfoundland . . . [more]

Over the past two years, much of my writing in this space has focused on the accelerating risks associated with artificial intelligence and the uneven state of AI regulation in Canada. I have written about stalled federal legislation, the growing role of privacy regulators, the increased risks of AI use for regulated professionals, and the early signs of AI related litigation beginning to surface in Canadian courts. Taken together, these developments point to a growing tension. Artificial intelligence is being deployed at speed, while the institutions tasked with managing risk remain fragmented, reactive, and unevenly equipped.

This column steps back . . . [more]

Generative AI is nearly impossible to avoid as a law student. Over the past few years, it has been embedded into many of the products commonly used for legal work (See e.g., proprietary research platforms, Google, Microsoft products, etc). Whether welcomed or resisted, generative AI is now part of the legal information environment.

There are many questions remaining about how to prepare students for the use of generative AI during their legal education for their future practice. While technological competence ≠ generative AI, we know that use of generative AI systems is a technical skill . . . [more]

Cases keep cropping up where counsel has used AI to create a court submission containing made-up cases. The common response on the part of courts and the profession has been: ‘prompt, but verify.’ It’s okay to use AI, just make sure it’s accurate.

I think this response misses the mark. But consider first how fixated we’ve become over the issue of verification — implying that this is all we need to be concerned about in deciding whether counsel should be using AI to write court submissions.

As Judge Moore in a Federal Court case wrote earlier this year:

The use

In my last column, I moved away from regulatory analysis to explore how artificial intelligence may affect specific functions within the legal profession. In this piece, I return to the theme of risk and broaden the discussion to consider the challenges AI presents across all regulated professions.

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence has already begun to reshape practice across a wide range of professions. For regulated professionals in Canada, including lawyers, physicians, engineers, and others governed by statutory, ethical, and fiduciary duties, these advances bring both significant promise and considerable risk. However, the legal and regulatory frameworks are . . . [more]