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Few lawyers and LRW instructors write and think more about Artificial Intelligence than Professor Jane Woods of Mizzou Law, who offers this most important AI advice: If you haven’t read the case, don’t cite the case.
- The Boies Schiller Cautionary Tale: That would have saved Boies Schiller’s bacon. We discuss the high-profile Scientology/Masterson appeal, and whether the Court of Appeal is going to strike plaintiff’s respondent’s brief because of the Boies Schiller attorneys hallucinated cases and otherwise wrong legal citations.
- AI’s Ideal Applications: Most effective AI uses include drafting standard legal sections, style polishing, fact organization, and processing large records.
- How to AI in Legal Practice: Avoid garbage-in-garbage-out by feeding case opinion PDFs from authoritative legal databases directly into AI projects—don’t let AI search the internet on its own.
- Don’t hate the “Em Dash”! Some firms have reportedly banned em dashes in legal writing because they’re seen as indicators of AI-generated text, highlighting how AI’s stylistic preferences (even good ones!) may be reshaping legal writing conventions.
- Should lawyers disclose AI use? It depends. But if you’re thinking about charging $900/hour and to outsource to a robot, maybe don’t do that.