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Generative AI Guide for Law Students: AI is Not New!

This guide provides an overview of generative AI and addresses how this technology is being used in legal practice. It also covered general GenAI news and tips.

AI is Not New!

AI has been influencing various aspects of our lives for decades.  From robotic home assistants and content recommendation systems to facial recognition technology and smart navigation tools, AI has been gradually integrated into our daily routines and experiences.

AI Has Been Used in Legal Practice and Education for Decades

AI has been used in legal practice for many years.  A few examples:

  • "Natural Language" searching in Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law.
  • AI in eDIscovery, including predictive coding/technology assisted review (TAR), which is an AI model that is trained to predict the relevance of other documents.
  • Data visualization and analytics, including tools like Lex Machina (Lexis).

For years, students have had access to educational tools that use AI, such as Grammarly, Turnitin, and others.

What Changed in 2022?

In November 2022, the first publicly available version of ChatGPT was released to the public.  While versions of GPT had been around for years, ChatGPT crossed a threshold by demonstrating a remarkable ability to generate coherent and useful text across a wide rage of topics.

Within two months of its November launch, ChatGPT surpassed 100 million monthly users, making it the fastest-growing consumer internet application in history. Its launch brought advanced AI technology into the mainstream and sparked rapid adoption in various fields, including education, business, and law.